Pornography
by PhoenixAeternum
Summary: AU/Dark Fiction. HG. The downward spiral, and what the bottom brings.
1. Chapter 1: One Hundred Years

**PORNOGRAPHY**

**Chapter One**

**One Hundred Years**

Quick and shallow breaths overwhelmed the otherwise silent basement of a large and forgotten manor in central London. Three figures, unconscious and insentient, were roughly bound to the back-wall of this basement. Their wrists were cuffed, arms over heads, with their chains attached to the ceiling above. Their ankles were also chained, forcing their backs against an unforgiving stone wall behind them. They were central to their dungeon's being.

There were only three people in the room, two girls and a boy. The boy, not older than fourteen, was skinny and very pale. His body hung slack in his chains, straining his limp arms. His face was smudged slightly with dirt and marred with a black-eye. The boy was tall, which brought more attention to his skeletal-skinniness. His hair was black and his eyes green, though they were shut and hidden behind his hair. The boy was dressed in black robes, which perhaps contributed to his perceived paleness, with the black of his hair contrasting against the pallor of his skin. His robes, however, were not perfect in their blackness; the ashes through which he had been dragged had seen to that.

To his right was his constant companion, his most trusted confidant. She had been with him in the beginning and he suspected she would be with him in the end. Her hair was a ferocious scarlet shade; if the boy was pale, she was deathly. Breaking the melancholy of her pale façade, however, were her brown freckles, quite prominent against their pallid canvas. While thin and pale, akin to her comrade, she was noticeably shorter. Also in-step with her counterpart, the girl's face was grubby and unclean, though thankfully lacking his black-eye.

On the opposite side of the boy was a bushy-haired brunette. Of the three, she was furthest along in the ecstasy of adolescence. Her face was matured when compared with the other two, whose faces both retained some vague remnant of the childhood they had left behind.

The three bodies hung limply in their chains, mere shackles supporting their weight. A casual observer might have thought them dead, were it not for their audible breathing. Their faces were cast downward, their necks slack, and their faces blank. Eeriness surrounded them; they looked like corpses, or perhaps figures in a wax museum.

The dungeon in which they were being held had once, many years ago, been an actively used basement. It had entertained ministers and foreign dignitaries in its prime, but now it had wasted away. The walls and ceiling were made of identical blocks of deep-grey stone which served only to enhance the bleak atmosphere of the room. The room itself was rectangular and longer than it was wide. A sense of gloom hung in the air. The only source of light was the cracks around the perimeter of the doorway, which stood atop a creaky wooden staircase. Light seemed to frame the door. Just beyond it was warmth and happiness, freedom. It made their dungeon seem that much colder, that much more harrowing.

The basement was very cold, significantly colder than it ought to have been in the middle of spring. The scent of it was musky and deep, smelling rather like moulded cabbage on the last day of summer. But no such a day had ever before felt so cold. One thing the basement definitely was not, however, was dry. It was very humid, giving the air greater gravity than it ought to have possessed. Between the temperature, humidity, and the outright odious atmosphere, the room was stifling.

For a long while, the atmosphere was still. None of the three spoke or moved, or for that matter recaptured consciousness. But slowly, almost subliminally, a sort of tension began to build in the room. It continued to increase slowly and achingly, rising in intensity until finally the black-iron door of the basement opened slowly, creaking and frightening. The sound was menacing, guttural and was followed by an immediate influx of white light.

Standing framed in the doorway, contrasting the light, was a tall figure who stalked down the groaning steps delicately and gracefully; despite the protesting sounds of the steps, there was great beauty and elegance to the descent. Its features were not recognisable, the light being to the figure's back.

When she reached the base of the steps, all lingering questions of gender were expelled; no man was able to move in a way that at once evoked such grace and terror. As her black-booted and carefully buckled foot touched the floor of the basement, a dozen small torches lit along the perimeter. They brought light to her features and revealed the face of the trio's captor.

She was a sight to behold. Her hair, obsidian in colour, was a few inches beyond shoulder-length and was likely her least extraordinary feature. Her face, while pale, had an unmistakable beauty about it; her cheekbones were high, and her face was slender, forcing an almost regal impression upon all who saw her. This woman's eyes were heavily lidded, but it was what these lids obscured that were her most unusual and bizarre quality.

Her eyes were a deep shade of purple, but it was immediately apparent that this was not a natural occurrence. There was a kind of unholy intelligence to her eyes. It was perhaps her eyes, if not the insidious air about her, that kept her from being considered attractive. She was beautiful, this much was beyond dispute, but she was not attractive.

It was as her purple eyes swept across the trio that her face, which before had been moulded into a look of impassivity, gained a disarming smile. There was malice, nay sadism, in her smile. The look upon her face suggested that this moment was the fulfilment of great toil and hardship. This was the climax of years' worth of drawn-out, torturous waiting.

She reached into her black robes and withdrew from her folds a wand of the same colour as her hair. She held her wand in her right hand delicately and examined her long fingers for a moment. Satisfied in some way, she, without preamble, made a grand sweep with her wand. A moment later, her satisfaction was increased by the sounds of disoriented, uncertain groans of painful awakening.

By the time her guests were half-way to lucidity, the woman had drawn a black armchair into existence and was sitting in it calmly. When it became clear that her precious guests had been overly affected by the spells that took from them their consciousness in the first place, the woman pointed her wand at the wrist irons of the centre one, the boy. She flicked her wand upward slightly and a moment later, the chains throbbed a shade of bright red. More had evidently occurred than a harmless change of colour, however, for not a moment after the chains had glowed their new shade, the boy's flesh hissed and he gave a shriek as the room was filled with the sinister stench of scalded skin. In vain, the boy twisted and writhed against his burning chains.

The woman emitted a humoured laugh, forcing fear upon all who heard her.

The cacophony of mirth and suffering shook the two girls from their insentience and forced them into a state of stunned perspicacity. When the boy had been scorched to her satisfaction, the woman gave a dismissive flick of her wrist, cancelling the boy's awakening.

The woman, sadism's smile marring her face, sank deeply into her black armchair. There was several moments' aching silence as the three figures took in their surroundings and recovered. As it was, when the three were finally able to concentrate fully on the sitting woman, no signs of recognition fluttered across their faces, an anti-climactic reaction.

After a few more moments of silence, the boy breathed, "Who are you?"

She smiled almost theatrically. "Do not you recognise me, Harry?"

Silence.

She looked at the red-headed girl, disappointed by the boy. "Come, little Weasley, surely you remember me?"

Silence.

"Has Dumbledore never explained to you why your family is dead? That pleasure was mine, you know." An underlying quiver of humour graced her words and the woman's theatrical smile remained affixed upon her face.

"My family was murdered by Death Eaters," retorted the little Weasley calmly and without emotion as if it was a line she was accustomed to repeating. Weasley looked at the woman in mild disdain. "I suppose they were your comrades. Only the delusional followers of Voldemort –"

"You will watch what you say whilst my guest, little Weasley," she said menacingly but at the same time calmly and almost pleasantly. "The Dark Lord's name is not to be tainted by the lips of a blood-traitor."

Harry smiled softly as a glint of understanding flashed in his eyes. "_You_ will hold your tongue, Bellatrix." He spoke in a light voice, calm and calculating.

She smiled. "You have heard of me, then."

"Where are Sirius and Remus?" Harry asked levelly, ignoring her query.

Bellatrix smiled and laughed lightly. It was an oxymoronic tinkling sound, odium and humour mixed into one. "My darling cousin and his," Bellatrix exhaled and smiled slyly, "_pet_ are not your concern, Harry Potter. You would do well to harbour more concern for yourself and your fellows, whose fate you may still have a modicum of control over."

Weasley, whose face had gone paler than the others, spoke again. "You are a fool, Lestrange. The Professor will storm this place. He will overtake you."

This statement, although delivered as a threat, elicited more dead-sounding and gleeful laughter from Bellatrix. "That old, Muggle-loving fool will never find this place! Silly girl!" she said between salvos of laughter. "My spies are imbedded so deeply, so high in his hierarchy, this place is so well-protected! That old man will never learn of it! Surely even you, Muggle," she cast a glance at the bushy-haired girl, so far the only silent occupant of the room, "know of the Fidelius charm?"

"Mind your own tongue, Bellatrix," said Harry quietly, hinting warning.

In response to Harry's words, Bellatrix laughed harshly, apparently finding absurdity in his commands. "So imperious, Potter! I am sorry to see that you adopted the same abortive ideology as your parents, that you follow the old man so blindly." Seeing that Harry was unaffected by her words, Bellatrix stopped laughing and her tone became sinister. "You will mind _your_ tongue in my presence, Potter, or I will mind it for you."

Harry smiled and chuckled softly, looking beyond her not-so-subtle threat. "You will mind nothing for me, Bellatrix. You are not prepared to kill us. You are not prepared to control us so. If your aim was to murder, we never would have woken up."

"You are bold, Potter," she spoke harshly now, no traces of laughter lifting her voice, "but you misjudge me. Surely," she was speaking to Weasley now, "you know that it is not beyond the scope of my ethos to enjoy my victims before I show them to the door?"

"No," interjected Harry, not allowing Ginny to speak. His voice was becoming harsher as well; still calm, but beginning to show traces of anger or frustration. "It is not a _thing_ which you are above." He was quiet for a moment, then scoffed and continued confidently. "You will not kill us. Torture and killing may satisfy your immediate bloodlust, but you have grander plans for us." Harry seemed to make his mind up about the matter. "For us your plots are more profound." Harry smiled and shook his head mirthfully, causing his chains to sway lightly and sound against one another. "No, Bellatrix. You _need_ us."

Bellatrix was silent and blank-faced for a moment, collecting her thoughts. But then a small, perhaps pleased, smile fluttered across her face. She spoke dully, her voice quiet, "I am impressed, Harry Potter. Your intellect: it's powerful, your wit is sharp, your tongue is silver, and you are not lacking in bravery. But I am inclined to wonder..." she placed her hands on her knees and pushed, standing up and then sauntered over to Harry, bringing her cheek to his. Slowly, almost sensually, she whispered into his ear, "How is your pain tolerance?"

Harry's world exploded. His body shook, and his back and neck arched as he fought against the pain. His mouth melded into a grimace, his brow crinkled and his eyes began to twitch as his toes curled. But he kept his mouth closed. Despite the insurmountable pain he was in, he outright refused to give Bellatrix the satisfaction of a scream. He struggled desperately to bring his chin to his chest – desperately struggling to keep his neck from breaking –, frenetically shaking but determined by spiteful resolve to accomplish his task. When finally he managed it, he struggled more violently still to open his clenching eyes and part his white, rigid lips.

Bellatrix, surprised but encouraged by Harry's defiance, tightened her grip on her wand and focused further into crushing the boy, concentrating on the image of Harry shrieking out in pain for mercy.

And while Harry was busy defying the reigning queen of hurt, his two companions looked on in dismay and horror. Harry's defiance, far from giving them any semblance of comfort or filling them with inspiration or hope, instead brought them greater despair. He was intentionally urging on Bellatrix, about half as safe as tickling a sleeping dragon; neither of the girls saw the logic to his actions nor understood his motives. To them, Harry's deeds seemed born out of a masochist's gluttony and little else.

Meanwhile, Bellatrix's extra efforts were having the effect she so desired. Harry's back and neck arched further, becoming more painful; his hands, which were clenched tightly, began to bleed and the blood trickled down his arms. When Bellatrix had unexpectedly upped the ante so forcefully, Harry's jaw had a spasm, causing it to open for a moment. In that brief moment, he had a thousand times come close to screaming, and when he desperately clamped his mouth shut again, he did so imprecisely and bit into his cheek. Product of this, the coppery taste of blood slowly filled his mouth, which was shut tightly. He must not give Bellatrix the satisfaction of a scream.

In his head, this was a simple battle of wills and nothing more. That kind of over-simplification was absolutely necessary in his mind; to complicate it further ran the risk of any number of things going wrong, of forming a plan too complex to succeed. This was about her desire to bring him to his knees and ending his defiance. However, Harry could not block out the pain, he could not reduce it; he could only deny it the power over him that it sought.

As the struggle for control mounted and the convulsions became more forceful and untamed, the urge to scream was intolerable, but some part of him, some proud iota of his being, refused to give Bellatrix her satisfaction, even now when the pain threatened to consume him and drown him. She was winning their battle of wills and that did not bode well with Harry Potter.

In a display of foolish one-upmanship, of intimate victory, Harry managed to force his limbs to reduce in their trembling and, though he feared he may well break his neck, commanded his face to greet Bellatrix's again. Scowling against the pain of the Cruciatus, Harry ordered his eyes open one more time. He compelled his lips to open, though his jaw gave great resistance, and, though the blood from his cheek poured out a little more with every word, he managed to rasp, "fac…ul…tam… cru…ci…a…to… me…a pla…cet…ne ti…bi… est?"

Bellatrix took a step back, her eyes slightly widened and her arms fell limp at her sides. The curse she had cast was lifted and Harry's legs, previously locked to support his weight against the spell, gave out. All that supported him once again were his wrist-irons, as he closed his ground-facing eyes and spat the blood from his mouth. "gratia," he spat again, "tibi ago."

It took Bellatrix a moment more to gain her bearings. The boy's strength was inconceivable, his will unconquerable. He had had the presence of mind not only to fight off screaming, and Bellatrix knew that the boy had wanted so desperately to scream, but also to respond audaciously – and in Latin, of all languages! She had never, in all her days of bringing torment, seen or heard of such a thing. It was such a pity that they could never be allies, that their ideologies clashed so acutely. He was exceptional.

Grown witches and wizards had died under such strain before, lost their sanity. Harry had been under the Cruciatus curse for nearly five minutes, and still he had the mental faculties to mock her doubt in his ability to withstand pain. He was exceptional.

But Bellatrix was still a Black, and Blacks were prized for their wit. And so it was a slightly dazed Bellatrix that responded to Harry's mockery, instead of her usual biting self. "ita." Wit wasn't with her that day. She needed to regain face.

Deciding after a moment that nothing would unnerve her captives more than a smile, she summoned one to her face and gazed at Harry. Her words were spoken softly, lovingly. "I am going to enjoy breaking you, Harry, making you squirm," she said silkily, a glint in her eyes. "Making you beg".

Without any further remarks, Bellatrix turned her back to the three and started for the exit. Just as she had set her foot on the bottom step of the staircase, she twisted her body around, looking back toward the three. She locked eyes with the panting Harry. "Tomorrow," she promised. Bellatrix Lestrange ascended the steps and left through the iron door.

The light left with her.


	2. Chapter 2: A Short Term Effect

**Pornography**

**Chapter Two**

**A Short-Term Effect**

It did not take the red-headed girl to demand an explanation for Harry's actions. "What the _bloody_ hell was that, Harry?" she shouted.

Breathing heavily and spitting out a small amount of blood, Harry gave a weary non-response, not looking at her. Speaking at the ground, he said, "You know what it was, Ginny."

Ginny almost growled. "She is going to _kill_ you, Harry! The highest degree of nobility is stupidity and you know it!"

Harry was silent for a few moments as he contemplated how to phrase his next. Slowly, he spoke, "As long as I live, Ginny, I will continue to do as I have." He had a fondness for defiance, it seemed. "If it draws her from you and Hermione, then it is worthwhile." Hoping to head-off Ginny's next irate statement, Harry attempted to pacify her. "I do not suspect that we shall remain here for long, Ginny. Do not despair." As an afterthought, "She will not kill me, Ginny."

Ginny might have spoken, if she'd had a quarter-second's chance. "Fool!" Hermione, the Muggle-girl, exploded, speaking for the first time and making it count. "Fidelius! Fi_dell_ius! We will not, cannot be saved! Headmaster Dumbledore can't help us! We have no _wands_, Harry!"

Hermione's fury quickly began to descend into hysteria. "She's going to kill us!" she sobbed. "We're going to die! We're _all_ going to _die_! She'll torture us until we are useless to her! We'll be made Longbottoms!"

"Be calm, Hermione," Harry said gently, urging her to be reasonable. "I meant my earlier words; Bellatrix needs us. I know it, Ginny knows it, Bellatrix knows it. If you consider the matter yourself, you will know it. We are of no use to her dead, and she is aware of it; she wants to trade us back to the Professor for... something. Some kind of leverage, fortasse. Perhaps she wishes to extract information out of us." Harry paused. "But from us she shall receive nothing." Harry's voice was harsh, in a confident fashion. A moment later, his tone became one of warning, speaking to both his comrades. "We must not underestimate her, however; remember always that she has evaded the Professor and about half of Europe for a decade. Never forget who she is and what she's done, and to whom she's done it. Bellatrix has emerged from hiding for a reason. I suspect we shall know her reason soon."

"What if it _is_ just revenge, Harry?" despaired Hermione after a moment, crying softly, but no longer sobbing. "Just simple revenge..."

"It is not revenge, Hermione;" said Ginny grimly, resolutely, "at least not exclusively. Harry is right; she would not resurface simply for vengeance. It's too sloppy, too reckless. She has had more than a decade to exact her revenge and must have had thousands of opportunities. And every time, she has not acted. There is something deeper afoot here, Hermione; we need simply wait for it to show itself."

Harry sighed, relieved. "Precisely."

A few moments passed before Hermione would speak again.

"How can you both be so calm?" Hermione's voice was tinged with resentment and her face was flushed as her body trembled.

"Because we know that we would be dead by now if she didn't need us for something, Hermione; that thought itself affords all the confidence I could need." It was Harry, in typical fashion, who tried to calm the girl.

"Don't you know what she's done to people?" Hermione demanded. "Don't you know what she did to the Prewetts? The Longbottoms...? Don't you remember what she did to the _Weasleys_?" Hermione's voice grew shriller as hysteria began to return. "Don't you know what she must have done by now to Sirius and Remus? Do you have any idea what she's _already_ done to you?" Her voice became shriller still and it cracked as she began to sob. "Don't you understand — _can't_ you understand what she will do to us?"

"Be calm, Hermione!" said Harry loudly, his voice deep and forceful. Hermione quieted. When Harry spoke again, it was in a softer, gentler tone. "We will get through this. As long as we stay alive and tell her nothing, then nothing else matters. We shall be released."

Hermione was not so convinced.

"He is right, you know, Hermione," added Ginny. Her face was paler than before and there was a slight tremble to her voice, but she spoke confidently and harshly, "Bellatrix could have killed us by now; she hasn't. That _does_ mean something."

Hermione's fears having been over-ruled, the room fell quiet. After a few minutes of silence and reflection, Hermione broke the silence they'd crafted in a small, almost childlike voice. "Harry, what did you say to her?"

"What?"

"When she was... when she was..." Hermione tried to skirt around the word, but it wasn't working, "_torturing_ you. You said something... I didn't understand what."

"Oh." Harry was silent for a moment, trying to remember his wording. "It was Latin; I more or less asked if she thought I was up to snuff."

"And what did she say?" asked Hermione.

"'Aye,'" supplied Ginny.

"Oh."

Silence again.

"Harry..." sniffed Hermione just a few seconds later. "You... you don't have to take the burden for us... We're... we're strong too, you know."

Harry sighed, having seen some shade of this coming. "I know, Hermione, I know." He felt very old in that moment, realising that he sounded like Dumbledore. It wasn't a pleasant feeling. "But I am more certain of my own ability to keep a level head through this than I am of either of yours."

_That_ wasn't the right thing to say.

"We are not so very _weak_, Harry," Ginny spat. Harry could hear her scowl.

"I know, I know," Harry agreed wearily, "I believe you. But in the heat of it all, I cannot stop you from saying something or revealing something in the way that I am able to stop myself. I have no control over your mouths."

"This is not your burden to bear, Harry," Ginny said stiffly. "You must trust that we too can endure."

"I believe that both of you can, Ginny," said Harry. Under his breath, too quiet for the others to hear, he murmured, "But I hope to never know."

"But —"

"Ginny," said Harry, cutting her off as a deeper desperation struck, "you _must_ listen to me. You _must_ let me take care of you." Harry let out a heavy breath and closed his eyes, reclining his head. He sighed and looked forward again, facing neither Ginny nor Hermione. "You must let me do this. _This_ is my role."

Ginny and Hermione were both silent.

"You know that I can get us out of here," Harry spoke with resolve, "if you would only follow me."

"We... we'll get out alive, t-then?" Hermione asked moments later.

"Yes." He said the word with determination, with resolve.

"Do you... do you promise?"

He felt like Dumbledore again as he nodded. "I promise."

Hermione nodded quickly, in short bursts, not moving her head more than a few inches with each movement. Ginny, on the other hand, simply looked resigned. She caught Harry's eye, when he had shifted his vision to her, and she exhaled through her nose. With a solemn nod, their fate was sealed and the weight of their lives fell squarely on Harry's shoulders.

Harry could not be certain how long had passed since the trio's last encounter with their captor. An internal clock was not something that he or any of his fellows had ever developed and the lack of light in the room did not allow them to judge time based on the brightness or darkness of the outside.

To Harry it did not feel long. While Hermione and Ginny were sleeping, Harry concentrated on forming some kind of plan. He had asked for the burden of keeping them alive and it was a mission he intended to accomplish. Part of his responsibility to them was to come up with some semblance of a plan, however fragmented.

And his plan _was_ fragmented.

He could only hope that Dumbledore would make the necessary deal to secure their freedom, and that he did so before Bellatrix succumbed to her more dangerous tendencies. He hoped that Dumbledore could save them before Harry had to.

Whether the time that passed since Bellatrix's leaving was infinite or infinitesimal ceased to matter when she re-entered the basement in which Harry, Ginny, and Hermione were being held. As she walked down the stops, she locked eyes with Harry. Her face was blank, her eyes betrayed nothing. Harry, in response to her coming, smiled politely and mockingly. Though his arms ached from their unusual position, he gave a small wave to Bellatrix. _draco dormiens nunquam titillandus_ he knew fine. But no one had ever told him _serpens dormiens nunquam titillandus_. So he prodded the viper.

"Hello, Bella," greeted Harry pleasantly. Bella was a dangerous thing to call her. "It is very kind of you to rejoin us."

"Thank you, Harry," she said poisonously, "but I thought we had established that the pleasure would be mine?"

"Surely you do not have a monopoly on pleasure? I must say that I have found events thus far to be to my satisfaction," countered Harry. What did it matter if he spoke lies? It was all in an effort to keep Bellatrix talking anyway.

"A masochist, are you, Harry?" she asked hungrily, a glint in her eyes.

"In the loosest sense." Naturally, he spoke nonchalantly.

"If it is pain that you revel in, Harry, I am keen to stoke your fire."

Harry said nothing. Instead he winked.

That got Bellatrix going. She frowned impatiently at him, "You have proven yourself to me, Harry, but you cannot endure eternally."

Harry smiled coyly. "You and I both know we needn't wait so long."

Bellatrix shook her head. "He cannot find you here, Harry; were you not listening when I spoke of the Fidelius?"

Harry laughed. "This place is not under the protection of a Fidelius, Bella!" He treated the notion as if it was ridiculous. Which it was, after all. "Were this place under the power of the Fidelius charm, we would not know where we are! We would be disoriented beyond all belief! You never told us where it is that we are residing, a prerequisite of the charm."

Bellatrix applauded the boy, her eyes dancing with some unknown light. "Impressive." There was silence in the room again, and Bellatrix had _that_ look in her eye again. And those very eyes flashed toward Ginny.

"I wonder, Bella, why you've not begun our session," he said, drawing Bellatrix's attention back to him.

"I'm terribly sorry, Harry. I underestimated your appetite for agony." She could be mocking too. "It has been so long since I last had intelligent conversation; that is the problem with being dead, you know," referencing a Ministry folly: pronouncing her dead eight years earlier without even a modicum of evidence. "The conversation: it's tedious." She walked closer to Harry, within an arm's length, and hissed breathlessly, "You are so gluttonous, Harry; so eager."

Harry gave a fake yawn. "I'm tired, Bella, so if you'll kindly get on with it..."

She smiled in response and placed her wand on his left temple. Harry's eyes widened slightly in response, this was about to become too dangerous. Bellatrix whimpered, "_Cru_—"

"That would be a mistake," said Harry quickly but calmly.

She leaned back, still holding her wand to his left temple. Blank-faced, she spoke. "Would it?"

"I am not Arthur Weasley," said Harry. "You need my mind. You shall not profit from scrambling it."

Bellatrix smiled. "And what makes you certain, Harry, that I need you for information?"

Harry effectively scoffed. "I live."

As if determined to make him lament the fact, Bellatrix whipped her wand at the left-half of his rib-cage. Without any kind of indication as to what the spell would do before it was all too late anyway, a jet of serpentine fire coiled itself around Harry's middle and squeezed.

It was hot, much too hot. Harry wasn't sure if his mouth or his skin emitted the hiss that sounded when the coils had burnt through his robes. The helix seared his skin. Harry's back became rigid and his jaw clenched tightly. It was with well-deserved horror that he realised he could smell the smouldering of something; something that, when burnt, smelt acrid and repulsive: his flesh.

As the scorching of his skin deepened, Bellatrix leaned to the right side of his face. Harry registered that she murmured something into his ear, but she was either too quiet or his concentration was too fully committed elsewhere for him to hear. He would be willing to guess a combination was at play.

Predictably, Harry's pained and strangled breathing, complemented by the stench of his blazing flesh, threw Ginny and Hermione into woeful sentience. It took only a moment for them to expel their lethargy and take in the current situation.

"Harry!" gasped Hermione and Ginny in tandem when they saw Bellatrix's fiery hold on him.

Harry could not speak to soothe them.

It seemed an eternity, but Bellatrix finally released him from her grip. His eyes rolled back and a gasp escaped Harry's lips, casting him headlong into an intense bout of panting. Bellatrix, in the meanwhile, had reconjured her black armchair.

"A point," Harry coughed at the sorceress, "well-illustrated." His head, which had been lolled back, then slowly rolled forward once more. He looked Bellatrix in the eyes "But surely..." he smiled slightly, "surely you can do better?"

Bellatrix threw her head back and laughed heartily, forcedly. Taking this to be an opportunity, Harry turned his head quickly to Ginny and shot her a firm thou-shall-not-interfere glance. Harry had just finished shooting a similar glance to Hermione when Bellatrix's laughter died down. The two girls, for their part, were too horrified to object.

"Such spirit! Potter, you spoil me!" she said with a smile that disturbed. "Oh! Dumbledore must be so proud!" The man's very name seemed to sober her. "But what will be your downfall is clear. You seek so fully to push yourself to your limits, what shall you do when those limits are crossed?"

Harry gave a rather pained attempt at a smile. "We will never know." There was silence for a moment as Harry and Bellatrix stared one another down. If looks could kill...

It was only when Harry began to sense that Bellatrix's attention might soon wander that he ruined the silence.

"You are _weak_, Bella. You've lost your edge over these ten years; the Bellatrix Lestrange of a decade ago would have me on my knees, begging for death." Harry was slightly surprised by his own aggressiveness, but kept on. "So come on, Bella," he half-snarled, "show me why men once feared you so." He could almost sense Hermione and Ginny's gasps.

Bellatrix was no longer smiling. The look on her face was... it was horrible. There was dangerousness in her gaze; malice burning in her eyes. A blind man could have told you what was happening; Bellatrix Lestrange was building herself up, taking herself back to the height of the war, to her glory days.

With leonine movements, she stalked toward Harry. She came up to his face, and leaned over to his left ear, and whispered slowly, purring every word. "You are brave, Harry, this much is true. But you also are foolish. You will break. And when you do, you will beg me to end it; beg me to end you."

The woman turned quickly to Ginny and flicked her wand, stealing consciousness from the girl. Bellatrix had only just done the same to Hermione when she looked to Harry again and said in a slippery voice, "This is between you and me. domina servusque" Harry was glad that neither Ginny nor Hermione, who had been hit with what Harry recognised as stunners, would be able to watch.

Bellatrix took a step back and pointed her wand at the left-side of Harry's torso. He watched with mingled anticipation and dread as she held her wand trained on him. She looked into his eyes and, for but a brief moment, an unlikely emotion traversed her face. It was gone in an instant and Harry was not able to wonder about it a moment before Bellatrix's words attracted his attention. "An old friend taught me this before you were born..." She paused for a moment and then, without warning, her wand arm cut upward and she hissed an incantation. "_Sectumsempra_!"

In an instant it felt to Harry as if someone had ran an icicle up and down his chest. It made him shiver. But in an instant, what once was cold became hot. He held back a surprised and pained hiss as the heat became something else. Light cuts were being carved into his chest. At the same time as the spell increased in potency, Harry remembered his Latin. Sectumsempra... Seco: cut. Semper: always.

It was not instantly clear whether the increase of pain in his chest was caused by deeper cuts or the accumulation of dozens of light cuts. Harry supposed it didn't really matter.

Bellatrix eyes narrowed slightly and her lips formed a small, curved grin. "It will keep getting worse, Harry, until you beg me to stop."

Defiance in his eyes but pain in his chest, he asked, "And should I abstain?"

"Then you will die," she said simply, pleasantly.

Harry could feel the blood trickling down his now bare chest (most of his robes had been either burnt or slashed away) and knew that, in a moment, the pain would exponentially increase. The blood was almost to his thin, but concentrated, burn marks and that would assuredly cause ample aching.

"Have we not yet established the fact that you shall not kill me?" asked Harry with quiet vigour as the slashing continued, almost dully.

"It has been posited, Potter, but established only in your mind," Bellatrix said fiercely. "You are strong, Harry, but your arrogance will do the death of you. You know as well as I that what I speak is truth, that you will give in, rather than perish." Wearing a mask of passivity all the while, understanding struck the torturess. "You seem to forget that, should you die, there are two who are able to take your place. It is in your interest, and theirs, to live. te sine, spes non habent."

It was then that the blood flowed onto Harry's freshly sizzled flesh. He gasped when it reached his burns as Bellatrix increased the potency of her spell, clawing deeper inside of him.

As the pain grew steadily in Harry's chest, he considered his options as dispassionately as he was able. Some bit of him remained confident that Bellatrix would not let him die, but his confidence was not full enough to allow him to risk all their lives. But it would hardly matter. Bellatrix would have to patch him up at the least, so that he did not die of blood-loss or infection anyway. That would leave Ginny and Hermione vulnerable to attack while Harry was recovering. He realised that he would have to concede defeat before he became too seriously injured. It was a blow to his pride, but arrogance was of less importance. They were paramount.

It was with great reluctance — mixed with the slightest amount of an ashamed mutation of relief — that he spoke up. "concedo," he said, his voice low and displeased, stinking of resignation.

His tormentor smiled. "You're learning, Potter," she said as she cut off her curse. She allowed his wounds to remain open and bleeding. She had no interest in healing him.

"When I was younger," she said almost immediately after cutting off the spell, "I used to drain the blood from my wounds." She lightly ran a finger over Harry's bleeding chest, gathering a sizeable quantity of blood on her index finger. "I'm afraid that, over the years, I have lost my desire for flesh and blood." She then brought her finger to her mouth and wiped it clean. Her eyes rolled back slightly and she moaned.

Harry shuddered once and consciousness fled from him.


	3. Chapter 3: The Hanging Garden

**Pornography**

**Chapter Three**

**The Hanging Garden**

"HARRY!"

The vibrant red glow of the dungeon did nothing to alleviate the sight that met Ginny Weasley's eyes upon her catching sight of Harry. He was a terrible site to behold in his goriest glory.

His lower torso was charred and flake-like, flesh burnt and hideous. Forevermore more disturbing than the sizzled flesh, however, was Harry's slashed and bleeding chest. Hundreds of gashes marred his skinny chest. The blood of his upper torso had dripped down the length of his body, leaving a puddle at his feet. To add to his image, the lack of blood from his session and their malnutrition of the last few days left Harry looking markedly paler and less healthy than he had in a year.

Ginny's scream echoed in the empty basement and served to rouse Hermione, but Harry just remained limp in his chains. He was definitely alive — his rising and falling chest was plainly visible — but his loss of blood had rendered him cataleptic.

"What is it, Ginny?" asked Hermione, still in a stupor. Ginny did not respond, however, and simply stared at Harry in a mix between fury and horror. It took Hermione a moment to take in the situation, but she was shocked into sentience upon looking at Harry. Her eyes became wide and she gasped. "Is…" she started slowly, "is he alive?"

"Yes!" Ginny snapped a moment later, horrified and angered that someone would even suggest otherwise.

"B-but... there's so much blood! And — and his skin!"  
"He's _not dead_, Hermione!" Ginny shouted, becoming angrier with the bushy-haired Muggle-born with every passing phrase.

The idea of having to watch while Harry — _Ginny's_ Harry — bled to, she was loathe to admit, death was a horrible prospect. She did not have access to a wand, and even if she did, it likely would not have helped enough. She knew some medicinal charms and spells, but she couldn't think of a single thing that could heal such burns or provide adequate aid to his slashed chest. Whatever curse had been employed to maul his chest in such a way was not likely to be undone with a simple Bandage charm, to be sure.

"Quiet!" Ginny whispered needlessly (Hermione was already silent) as Harry's eyes opened and shut rapidly. "Harry?" she probed cautiously. Though still chained, she subconsciously leaned toward him.

It took a moment, but Harry's eyes opened again — this time remaining that way. "Harry?" Ginny probed again in an attempt to get his attention. A moment later, the black-haired boy gutturally moaned and shook his head slightly, expelling the fluffiness of oblivion.

Harry sucked in a breath from clenched teeth and followed it up with a moan. It was when Ginny said Harry's name a third time that he answered her. "What?"

"What did you do?" Ginny's voice was deadly and slow.

Harry, still reeling with grogginess, responded with, what was intended to be a firm, reassuring headshake and said, "I gave in; nothing more, nothing less."

"Gave in?" Ginny stuttered incredulously, having missed the memo about reassurance. "She set you on fire and flayed your chest! Do not tell me that you _gave in_!"

Harry shook his head wearily, closing his eyes again. "This..." he swung his right arm toward his body slightly, "This is nothing." He sighed. "She saw through what I was doing." A sad frown affixed itself to his face. "We both knew she would, of course," Harry granted. "I just wish we'd had more time."

"Bugger your plans, Harry!" Ginny interjected. "Look at yourself! Look at the blood you've lost!"  
Harry grinned, showing his teeth. "'Tis not so very bad, Ginevra —"  
"'Not so very bad'!" Ginny breathed. "You know as well as I that if Bellatrix does not heal your chest soon—"

"She will not do it, so don't waste thought on what should be," Harry said quietly, his head still inclined back and his eyes still shut. "This is the price of defiance. She will keep these wounds open, she will keep me weak. But she shall not kill me."

"If she doesn't seal you up, you will die!"

"No," Harry almost wheezed out a chuckle, "this will not kill me. Not anytime soon, that is."

Ginny exploded, "YOU'VE—"

"I know, Ginny, I know," Harry placated. "But it is better now than it was before. If I had to guess —"

"Well bugger _your_ guess; _I_ would say that you are going into shock!" Ginny said angrily. "No amount of the vile potion that Nicolas gave you will save you from losing that much blood!"

"Uncle Nicolas and Auntie Perenelle swear by it, Ginny," Harry reminded with a helpless smile. "And, as I've already said, the wounds are less painful now than before. I am far too calm at the moment to be in shock, and you know it. And my mind —"

"Evidently is addled!"

"— remains blissfully unaltered."

Following this there was a tense silence, with Ginny glaring at Harry and Harry looking back defensively. It was Hermione who broke the stalemate.

"Harry," Hermione asked quietly, breaking the rigid silence. "What... what do we do?"  
There was contemplative silence for a short while. "I don't really know," Harry finally conceded. "Just..." Harry sighed. "Just remember your Occlumency — no matter what." He paused again. "And that goes doubly for you, Ginny." Harry shook his head. "You and I both know more that could help Bellatrix than Hermione does—" Harry stopped himself(one word) from speaking and back-tracked. "But Hermione, you must always act as if you know everything. Bluff all day; never let her believe you know less than we do. Never give her a reason to view you as anything but indispensable."

Hermione nodded, at once pleased and frightened that she knew so much less than her comrades. She knew it made her, in the eyes of their captor, dispensable. Or at least the most so of the three of them. But it also made her unable to give anything away, should her Occlumency shields break down. Hermione was thankful that Harry and Ginny had insisted that Dumbledore help teach her Occlumency during the past year. Being close friends with two of the most famous magical beings in Europe came with risks like these… but, if she was honest with herself, she could never have imagined herself in a position like this.

This wasn't the way things were supposed to be. She was supposed to be picking Harry and Ginny's brains for help on her third-year exams, not standing in a cold, eerily-blue room, waiting for a saviour. Harry insisted that Dumbledore would negotiate them out... soon. She had that same faith, at least to a degree, but Harry's optimism was beyond hers.

The burden on him was large — too large. He was strong and he was brave, but... could anyone stand under such pressure? Bellatrix's power was... There was nothing that Hermione had ever seen, no display of Harry's, or Ginny's, or Dumbledore's, that could ever rival what Bellatrix had done. She had read about Bellatrix in a few books, but nothing had ever suggested she was so powerful. Most just listed her as a believed supporter of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and that she was killed in France in 1984 — they never hinted at her raw magical ability.

But the way that Harry stood up to her... Hermione blushed slightly, embarrassed by the awe she felt for Harry. If she allowed herself to think about it, she had always had something of a crush on Harry; just a silly little infatuation, really. But, she admitted to herself, any such feelings had increased despite — or perhaps due to — his actions during the last few days. It — he — was fairy-tale-esque, really; he stood alone against Bellatrix, shielding all of them from pain. A beacon of light in the darkness, the only one any of them really had. She had faith in him.

Many hours later, Harry Potter, bleeding and in pain, closed his eyes and cleared his mind. Hermione and Ginny were sleeping, which was a good thing; Ginny would be likely to have a fit of some sort if she knew what it was that Harry was currently attempting.

Years and years ago, Harry and Ginny had been rather proficient in wandless magic. They had begun to acquire a degree of ability in it at a very early age, but the ability had gradually faded as they grew more and more accustomed to using their wands. Neither Harry nor Ginny had successfully performed intentional wandless magic in almost five years. Dumbledore had assured them that it was an ability that faded for all wizards and witches and that the vast majority never learned to grasp even the basics of the skill after it had faded. None of that really served to comfort the two children, however.

Over the years, Harry and Ginny had made a number of failed attempts at wandless magic. It was a point of nostalgia for them as much as anything else; that was, until a situation such as this arose, when it was desperately needed. There were a number of spells that would be suited to the breaking of metal chains — various cutting charms, liquidation charms, about every transfiguration spell on the books, and countless others —, but Harry doubted that a spell proper was called for in their situation. At any rate, he was even less likely to be successful at his attempt if he aimed for true precision.

That was why he was doing what he was doing, and he knew that Ginny would be incensed with him when all was said and done. It was a risky thing, directly tapping one's magical core without a focal point. Sure, he could stare for a really, really long time at the chains and call it focusing his magic, but he knew better. One could not focus such magic through the eyes!

So he would do what he had to. Mentally, he would concentrate all that he was into the chains breaking. He could only hope that he did not implode. _That_ was one of the main risks of improper wandless magic. There was always the potential that the magical core of a witch or wizard could be overloaded and simply cause the body to destroy itself from the inside and plainly burst. It was that possibility that would make Ginny so infuriated with him.

Outwardly, he was confident that Dumbledore would have them out of their prison very soon. He masqueraded this to Bellatrix, to Ginny, and to Hermione in the hopes that they would believe him; or, he reflected, that he would believe himself. But deep down, he knew; he knew that Dumbledore would have done something by now if there was anything that could be done. Harry knew that they were on their own.

Harry knew that, when all was said and done, Bellatrix would kill them, but only after extracting every bit of useful information out of them using whichever means were at her disposal. And, if Harry knew Bellatrix's mind half as well as he thought he did, he knew that she would find ways to get the information out.

So, Harry concluded, this was the most expedient way of getting what he wanted. But, he knew, if he failed here then there would be no hope. If he could not break his bonds, and work from there to break Hermione and Ginny's, then they would have nothing left.

He had always been aware of his abilities. Dumbledore often boasted that Ginny would one day be the most powerful magical being in all of Europe, save for one. That one, naturally, was Harry. Dumbledore had always hinted at some power that Harry could not rightly fathom; he hinted at a power that would trounce all others. Harry had not seen such a thing in himself — it was obvious that Bellatrix was more powerful than he and Dumbledore beyond her. But, if he was honest with himself (and he did try to be), then he realised that he likely was the most powerful person of his age.

He knew of the Hogwarts curriculum for people his age, though it had taken years to discover it exactly; Dumbledore had spent a great deal of time keeping that knowledge from Harry and Ginny, and Harry now knew why. The pair of them _were_ far beyond what the Hogwarts second and third years were doing. Disarming charms were amongst the first offensive spells that Dumbledore had taught them, and the better part of a decade had passed since Dumbledore first taught Disarming charms to them.

Did that make him and Ginny exceptional? Perhaps it did, but Harry had never considered himself significantly more powerful than others. It wasn't until he and Ginny had attended the Duelling Club a year ago that they realised that they were indeed more powerful than others. It wasn't like they had ever had someone against whom they might compare. Occasionally they would speak with a Hogwarts student, but they had never really had a magical contest. And most Hogwarts students would, annoyingly, stare at them in awe, like they were heroes or something, rather than hold acceptable conversation.

The only real judge of ability that they'd had for years and year was Dumbledore. And, of course, the most that they could gleam out of those comparisons was that Dumbledore was, definitely, more able than they. No, they did not understand just how advanced they were until they had befriended Hermione Granger. Harry still held, however, that Hermione would have been quite as powerful as Harry and Ginny if she had begun her education at the same age as them, with a like instructor.

Harry could not help but think that it was all rather inconsequential now.

His eyes still closed and his mind concentrating still, Harry thought he felt something achingly familiar. It was a peculiar sensation, cool but in a not unpleasant way. And then the sensation disappeared from its place of origin (his upper chest) and relocated itself to the tips of his toes. Slowly, achingly, it began to ascend. It was cool and seemed to rise up him at a snail's pace. First, it encompassed the whole of his toes, but to stop there was useless, so it continued higher; the bottom of his feet became cool, then the tops. It spread further up, wrapping around his ankles and twisting up his shins. His fingertips began to shake with a mixture of chill and adrenaline; this was it.

The trickling of energy began to swirl around the tips of his fingers. Onward it rose and by the time the energy of below had reached his knees, his elbows had been arrived at. He was being dipped into this deep water, the same deep water of which he felt a drop every time he cast a spell. Had he not been expecting to feel _something_ odd, he likely would not have recognised that this stream of force was the same source whence his spells came. His well of magic seemed so much deeper now, so much vaster, now that it meant life or death.

By the time he had been submerged in this magic up to his waist and his arms had been completely overtaken, his eyes began to shake and his eyelids fluttered, opening and closeing(you need a verb) at an uncontrollable rate. His whole body began to shiver and shake as the magic overtook him more completely with every moment. His mind, which had been concentrated on breaking his chains, went blank as his vision went black. As the magic within him fully encompassed his body, it expelled itself from his body and spiralled up and down his body like white-blue bolts of electricity.

And then, as the electric-blue magical energy swirled up his body faster and faster, there was an explosion. Harry's magic expelled itself from his own body and flew toward every corner of the room. The walls were hit, the stairs, Hermione and Ginny, the chains... all was struck, save Harry himself. His chains shattered, the walls rattled, Hermione and Ginny shook, the stairs creaked. No longer supported by his shackles, Harry fell to the ground motionless.


	4. Chapter 4: Siamese Twins

**PORNOGRAPHY**

**Chapter Four**

**Siamese Twins**

Harry's eyes were closed. He was not breathing. He lay in a small puddle of mixed dust, ash, water, and blood, the left half of his face resting in the murky solution. His jaw and face alike were slack. From him was given not the slightest indication of life.

While Harry was lying motionless and Hermione and Ginny were screaming and convulsing, heavy footfalls could be heard above. At first they had been faint and far away, but a moment later they were right above the trio's heads and a moment after that, at the door. Then the door slammed open and shut with a mighty clang and Bellatrix Lestrange, tyrant of the household, came storming down the stairs, apoplectic and shaken.

When Bellatrix arrived in the basement, her eyes took in everything post-haste. The most instantly noticeable thing was, of course, the two shrieking girls. They were convulsing wildly and seemed to be in immeasurable pain. Bellatrix was by no means contra to the idea of Hermione Granger and Ginny Weasley flailing in pain, but that she was not the source caused her discomfort. That she hadn't the vaguest idea of what _was_ the cause led beyond discomfort and into the merry land of distress.

But she did not have time to think so much of the two girls, as it took her but an instant to realise that Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, was lying on the ground, face down, in a pool of murky liquid. His chains were still hanging on the wall, but both the ankle and wrist irons had been shattered at the point where they would have met Harry's skin. It was then that she very slowly began to piece together what had occurred.

Ginny, thrashing in her chains and shrieking like a banshee, was in immeasurable pain. Nothing could have prepared her for this torture; nothing could immunise one to such violent, consuming excruciation. Her legs thrashed and her arms writhed as her spine curled and twisted in agony. It was an overbearing, drowning, smothering, engrossing kind suffering, whose capacity for malice seemed infinite.  
Nothing — neither the way her toes curled so intensely that the bones broke, nor how her spine twisted and redoubled upon itself, not her screams of anguish, nor the fact that she had balled such a fist as to break skin and draw blood, nor that she could not breath for lack of a reprieve in which to take a breath.

Neither that her screams had become so intense that the blood vessels in her throat had ruptured from overuse, obliging blood to jet from her mouth, nor the reality that, if she didn't stop screaming _now_, she would begin to drown — _nothing_ could describe the pain she felt. _Nothing_ could come close to portraying the feeling of pure, foreign magic forcing itself into one's body and devouring the substance it found there. There was nothing to do but scream out her blood, her anguish, her terror...

And then, without motivation or clear purpose, the pain stopped mounting. In an instant, it was gone, and all that was left were the after-effects: the horrible, empty-stomached, crimson retching of acidic fluids and scarlet blood; the choking and gasping breaths, borne themselves of a near-futile dream; the lingering anguish of aching bones and absence of essence.

And then, very distantly, a low sound could be heard. It was deep and unremitting, entrancing and mournful. And very slowly, Ginny's mind, unsound and muddled, began to follow that tempting hum, where all things would be all right again, and she could let go. And as this low humming grew louder, the tune still did not change, comforting to her mind. It grew subtly louder until the sound was all she was aware of and was all that was, and her mind closed as idyllic incognisance removed her from everything.

Hermione, who too had experienced the all-encompassing torture, had been relieved of the torment several moments before Ginny, though her suffering was quite as intense.

All three of Bellatrix's captives were now gripped in unconsciousness; Harry on the ground, Ginny and Hermione limp in their chains. The suddenness with which the screaming had stopped was something that Bellatrix could not have anticipated. She had no idea what, exactly, had occurred — but it obviously was something beyond excruciating. The passion with which the girls had screamed... It elicited a flutter up her spine. That was power. That was _pain_. A familiar sensation settled in her stomach. She licked her lips and let out a wavy breath.

It took some time for Harry, Hermione, and Ginny to awake. By then they had long since been secured further in their chains — that _anything_ Harry had done, inadvertently or otherwise, had broken a set of chains that had been spelled to be unbreakable was cause for alarm. Their irons had been removed and replaced, now tempered with a potion which fused with the spell and by all rights should have made it absolutely unbreakable, regardless of a magical explosion.

Some time later, mockery was once more an active option for Bellatrix. "'Harry Potter:" read Bellatrix off a long piece of parchment when Harry had regained consciousness, "Let's see, what have we... Ah yes! 'Three years-running champion of the Under-Seventeen English Duelling Society..." she trailed off again.

Bellatrix stopped reading the paper and looked Harry in the eyes. "I do wonder why you never mentioned this to me, Harry." She returned to her paper, "'…and also possesses an extensive knowledge of curses and charms; it is believed that Harry Potter possesses a powerful resistance to Veritaserum and other truth serums. The public is warned not to come into contact with Potter and are urged to contact the Auror's Office upon sight.'"

Harry, his neck loose and his eyes unfocused and rolling, took in little of this. His head was in a haze and little of what he heard made its way from his ears to his brain. He took no note of Bellatrix's mocking or her listing off of his accomplishments. It did not occur to him that very few people knew exactly which languages he held a degree of ability in, nor did it strike him as strange that his Occlumency/Legilimency ability-information was being rattled at him. He didn't comprehend that he had been sold out. His mind was muddled and very tired and was left with very little capacity for understanding.

He did not feel Bellatrix seize his chin and shove his face to the left; he did not feel her slap his cheek, tossing his head to the right. He did not feel that his skin was cold and did not know that his pupils were dilated. He did not realise that there were heavy beads of cold sweat were running down his face from his forehead, and he didn't know that his breathing was occasional and shallow. He did not know that Bellatrix was annoyed with his lack of awareness and he did not know that she intended to pull him from it.

When the Cruciatus curse, having been cast by Bellatrix silently, struck him, he felt nothing at all. Although his limbs shook and his neck rolled again, there was no pain felt and no recognition showed on his face; seen was neither a grimace nor a whimper; heard was neither a shriek nor a moan.  
Finding that her curse had little, if any, effect on the boy, Bellatrix gave it up as a bad job. There was no pleasure to be had in torturing those who were too far gone to feel anything. And it was because of just this lack of feeling — this absolute indifference — that Bellatrix moved on to more sentient subjects.

Hermione and Ginny had had it pretty rough. Their return to consciousness had been long, as it had been for Harry, but they had made generally greater recovery. Harry was insentient, vegetated; Ginny was lucid and conscious, Hermione too was lucid but currently possessed by sleep.

In truth, nothing greater could have happened for Bellatrix than to have Harry's magical core burst — or at least that's what she assumed had happened. _If_ Harry recovered to a state of cognisance, and currently it seemed quite an "if", then he would be quite vulnerable. Without magic, his ability to defend against Legilimency would be stunted; his immunity to truth serums destroyed. In addition, she greatly suspected that the Cruciatus curse — and other pain curses — would have an amplified effect. She hoped that it would have the effect on Harry that it had on Muggles.

She missed the delicious screams of pain that only Muggles could feel, the retching and gasping of convulsing throats and throbbing shrieks, the backs that would spasm and twist and curve, the sobbing and pleading for mercy of the ultimate ache, and fighting for freedom from the pain, and the addiction she had of watching them disintegrate, watching them break to pieces...

That was what excited her about Harry; he was once proud and mighty, and now he was incoherent and felled. That _absolute_ disintegration was what she sought, above all else; any information she received from the three was secondary. This wasn't about her master anymore, this wasn't about revenge; this was about causing the fall of the good and the powerful. This was about the downward spiral. This was disintegration.

Bellatrix brought her face to Ginny's horrified one. It was a psychological kind of suffering that was brought by being forced to watch a loved one tortured. It was another kind of psychological suffering indeed that was brought on by watching someone have no reaction to pain that should have crippled them. Being in the dungeon of Bellatrix Lestrange was like duelling in the fog — only a lonely silhouette of truth existed in the room, and nothing was concrete, nothing was certain.

Ginny could not have known, fully, until the moment that Harry was struck with the Cruciatus, just how damaged he had been. She could not even find it in herself to hate him for his foolishness, and how she wished she could. It had been a foolish manoeuvre, a very foolish one at that. But she understood his intentions. On some level, she admired him for his bravery. Part of her was stuck between wishing that she had thought to do what he did before him, and the other half was ashamedly thankful that she had not had the opportunity. The thought filled her with guilt.

Because, while she knew that what she had felt when Harry's magic invaded her — and she, too, was near certain that it was indeed Harry's magic that had been launched at her — was all-consuming pain, it must have been a thousand times worse for Harry. How couldn't it have been? She and Hermione had recovered, but Harry? He was close to comatose still, not even having enough sense about him to realise when he was being tortured. She couldn't begin to fathom, on any level, the kind of pain that one must feel when one's magic is expelled so completely from one's body. She struggled to find a pain that she knew which could be used as some kind of measure, but there was none.

The fiery, burning feeling brought on by her own situation was the same effect, but in reverse, and Ginny had to wonder if that was even remotely similar to what happened to Harry. The Cruciatus curse, which she had been placed under only a very few times, could not possibly feel the same — the Cruciatus was born of a magical desire for torment, but no amount of ill feeling could make up for the fact that the amount of actual magic expended in a Cruciatus was much less than what Harry had just expelled.

She did not have time to continue her thoughts before Bellatrix's face loomed before hers, a horrific look upon her nemesis' face. And she'd been reading Harry's playbook.

"Harrius cogito dormire vult; itaque, tecum invicem eius volo ludere," Bellatrix said in a soft tone, belying the nature of her words. "sed enim, ludemus mirabilis ludum."

"ludus modum cuiusmodi, scorte?" snarled Ginny, intentionally abusing grammar for the sake of effect. Her voice was gravelly and rough, her vocal cords still recovering from previous events. Ginny had lost the calmness that she and Harry were well-known for and had not stopped herself from referring to Bellatrix in ways that the Professor would have reprimanded her for. Now was not the time for propriety and kindness.  
"ludi nomen 'cruciamentum Ginevrae' est," said Bellatrix coolly, ignoring Ginny's comment. "cruciatus mentis est, per legilimencia. tu exspecto frui id." Bellatrix spoke quickly and coldly, but with a smile still attached to her face. "scio ero."

Ginny didn't flinch. She knew this was coming, that torture was imminent. She knew this all, and she smiled. With poisonous subtext and words harshly whispered, she uttered, "interfector es, sed non interfeces me, nec interfeces Harrium aut Hermionam. requires nos. Harrius emendas, sapio nunc."

Bellatrix made a peculiar face, half-way between a scowl and a smirk, before she ceased to play the language game and spoke plainly. "You are overconfident, much like _that_," she jerked her head toward the limp Harry. "Your intellect is not lacking, girl, but Dumbledore cannot teach strength; he cannot teach the force of will. That your comrade can withstand the Cruciatus curse and mock me still says nothing of your own ability, and it requires more than an act of the heavens for my misfortune to be such as to have captured two of his ability."

The words came out in a stream of consciousness, spoken rapidly and unhindered by conventional cadence.

"Of his stock," again referencing Harry, "there are few. You ride on his coat-tails, girl; on his strength and accomplishments. It was he who felled the Dark Lord. What have _you_ done, girl? You've been fortunate, which hardly counts as skill."

Bellatrix looked at Ginny almost mournfully. "I wonder if you even consider yourself lucky anymore. Wouldn't it have been better to have died with your brothers and parents? With your uncles? Wouldn't it have been better for you to die, infantile and unaware, than to live through this?" Bellatrix stopped talking for a moment, stood up straight and tilted her head back, looking down her nose at the red-maned Ginny. There was a glint in her eye again. "You will be reduced to a mere shadow before I am through. You will envy the boy whom you love. You will envy his fate."

Bellatrix grasped her wand from her inner-pocket and curved her right arm upward. Her wand, mid-movement, had transfigured itself into a plain, unremarkable knife. And she slit it up, ripping through Ginny's eye.

Ginny screamed and flailed in her chains as she tried in vain to seize her slashed, bleeding, and blinded right eye, but it was not to be. Her restraint would not allow for it. All she could do was arch her back and neck, all the while unsuccessfully trying to grasp her eye, screaming. She could feel the gash that extended from just below her right eye, on her cheek, to an inch above her useless eye.

It took her a moment more for her brain to register that her chains were scalding her. Bellatrix had charmed them as she had done to Harry's when they first arrived, and now the pain was no longer restricted to her eye. It permeated every bit of her body; from her head to her toes, nothing but writhing, scalding, seizing pain. She screamed wildly, bursting once more her already severely damaged vocal chords, which proceeded to gush forth blood for a second time. The blood from her mouth caused her to retch as she continued to writhe against the pain, and sick coated her lower-face and chest. It mingled with the blood from her eye and mouth and the sweat that already had been there, pooling at her feet.

Bellatrix watched with insane glee as the adolescent girl thrashed in her chains and screamed her insides out. Between the shell that Harry had become and the torment that she currently was putting Ginny through, she sincerely doubted anything could please her more. As she drew an armchair into existence, she wondered absently if it was even worth extracting information from the two. At this point, it mattered little whether her master was returned to glory; she was the most powerful person here —

She rose from her seat again and cancelled the Scalding charm on Ginny's chains. Instantly Ginny's writhing and screaming stopped, though tears still streaked down her face and she hissed lightly. Bellatrix brought back her right hand and smacked Ginny across the left cheek, getting her attention fully.

"You will tell me exactly where the Dark Lord has been these last thirteen years, and you will do so now," she spoke firmly, quietly, quickly, and harshly, leaving no room for debate or refusal.

She saw in Ginny's eyes the emotion that she most craved: fear. Utter and complete terror was clear in her eyes. It was a terrible thing to see torture, particularly the torture of a loved one. But it was quite different, though perhaps not worse, to experience such pain yourself.

Feeling that the girl needed coaxing, Bellatrix said all the more dangerously, "Do you doubt still that I will kill you?"

The girl, her face at once both pale and bloody, took an age to react. She was torn between faith in Harry's judgment and loyalty to his cause and her own primal will to survive. A war waged inside her, those that were pro-affirmative and those that were anti-affirmative battling for dominion over her mouth. In the end, however, there could be only one victor. After holding its ground and struggling successfully, the loser had been named.  
She nodded her head.

Ginny, crying, said, "You could have killed us long ago, Bellatrix. You didn't kill us, and until now you never even questioned us. You don't know what you want, and you're not foolish enough to make a decision as permanent as our deaths." She struggled successfully to control her voice, to keep it from wavering and giving signs of anything other than conviction. And although her gash hurt as much now as it ever did, she managed to keep a firm tone.

Bellatrix glared at the girl lethally, but said nothing for the moment. She could only reflect, hatefully, on the similarities between Ginny and Harry. Ginny had his defiance, his intelligence. Under threat of obliteration — with reason to believe it to be true — Ginny still defied her. Was it bravery? Was it foolishness? Bellatrix could not know. What she did know was this: the pair could have been her greatest allies. In another world.

Bellatrix nodded curtly at the adolescent girl, still glaring. She withdrew her wand again and revelled in the fact that Ginny flinched as the wand came into sight.

"You are in need of convincing, in need of affirmation." She paused and sneered, "I am older now, Weasley, but I have not softened." Scowling deeper and furrowing her brow, summoning all the hatred she could to the surface, she took aim at her target, closed her eyes and intoned silently, _Avada Kedavra_!

The rushing sound of death sped toward its target, screeching of death. The emerald light connected with the girl, Bellatrix's target. Her body fell limp in her chains, with nothing but the cold sound of jangling metal to sound her death.


	5. Chapter 5: The Figurehead

**PORNOGRAPHY**

**THE FIGUREHEAD**

Ginny was too shocked to scream. Hopelessly, helplessly, she had watched as Bellatrix curved her body toward Hermione and shot off the deathblow. Ginny could not see if the spell had hit its mark, but Bellatrix's jubilant and triumphant cackling had told her all she needed to know.

"No, _no_..." she said, shaking her head. She was numb, unaware of the pain her eye caused her. She was utterly encompassed in Hermione's... She couldn't think it. "Her... no..." Her face was white and her eyes clouded with disbelief. It could not be. Her legs swayed. The sight of Hermione's white and shocked face, her body slack and unsupported by her own volition, would have been devastating to even Harry and Dumbledore, if the former was in any condition to see others and comprehend the sight, and if the latter was able to see through walls from hundreds of kilometres away.

And although Ginny's mind told her the irrevocable truth — that Hermione was dead, and that she and Harry had failed to protect her — a part of her could not believe it to be true. It was a display of unintended dissension of thought; the logic knowing, but the will disbelieving. It forged a kind of scarring unity in Ginny's mind, with the two contradictory concepts nullifying each other, rendering her mind without a formulation of thought.

Hermione hadn't even been conscious to receive her death; she had been under the influence of another of Bellatrix's Stunning spells. Ginny would later come to debate within herself whether this was a blessing or a curse; to die without knowledge of the impending doom was likely more peaceful, but it was also sudden and cruel. It was without warning and undeserved.

At the moment, Ginny did not even have the presence of mind to be enraged or sorrowful. All there was in her mind was the blankness of shock and contradictory thought; it could not be, but it was. Logically, it was fallacious; that which could not be irretrievably was.

Slowly, like water trickling through the cracks of a dam, thoughts began to organise themselves in Ginny's head and she began to regain understanding. Accompanied by the incessant, jubilant celebratory cackling of Bellatrix, Ginny found her rage. She lunged against her chains, snarling and growling at the celebrating woman; Ginny's actions were of the most primal and fundamental order. Reverting further into a primal state, her snarling grew into shrieks of rage, unintelligible in exact content, but clear in meaning.

Bellatrix, having seen this all, was taken aback. Her euphoria was invaded by irritation. The joy to be had in mocking someone who was in no condition to take note of the words was severely restricted. After all, half of the fun was the posthumous torment of the murdered one's friends and family. And Ginny had the nerve to take that from her.

"Bella, what have you done?" croaked a voice that she had not expected to hear again. Harry was back from the brink. "What have I done?" he murmured, for the moment ignoring Ginny's primality.

And his mind went back; back to the actions that had led to this moment. He was viewing his actions, the ones that had led to this swift and terrible act. He knew not how many days and nights back his mind travelled; in this room, there was no sense of time passed. Decades, days, hours, minutes... None of them could know. But what he could know was that he had failed.

He had promised to protect Ginny and Hermione both. He had made them swear their absolute allegiance to him and his every act. They had trusted him and, with Hermione's death, he had failed. It wasn't supposed to be like this; they were supposed to escape it all, unscathed by Bellatrix and liberated by Dumbledore. But Harry had failed; he had overestimated Bellatrix's will and Dumbledore's powers.

And he knew that he deserved the hollow sensation in his chest and knew that he deserved more still. It should have been him that had died, him that had paid the price for his incompetence. Hermione's fate was not of her own doing; it was of Harry's, and he would have given so much to receive her fate. She had only been taken because she was with Harry and Ginny. If only they'd never met...

As the fog of his follies retreated further, he could feel the sting of the gashes on his chest and of his scorched flesh, and he knew that he deserved it and he hated himself for not having more. If he had been wiser, if he had been less reckless, perhaps this could have been avoided. Ginny and Hermione had been so ignored by Bellatrix all this time, but with his act of foolishness, his last ditch effort at an escape, they had been the receptors of Bellatrix's boredom.

What was more, he knew now that he could never attempt again what he already had. His magic, he could feel, was too far gone. There was no tingle of power in his fingertips, nor the proper sense of calm that his magic brought him. He had failed and Hermione had died, and that was what it all came back to.

Bellatrix, when she had heard Harry's low and pained question, perked up instantly and drove her attention toward Harry. "So the prince awakens!" she exclaimed, her eyes lighting. "Look about you, boy! Look at the destruction you've bred! Would you doubt me still, boy?" she asked, laughing again. "You've trained them well, you know — this one," referring to Ginny, "had such faith in you! But look, Harry, look what it has brought her!"

Bellatrix's hand dove into her folds. In a flash, she had her wand pointed at Ginny's face, a horrible smile on her face, contorted and sadistic. Ginny had recoiled the moment Bellatrix's hand had flung into her robes, and now trembled hard with the wand pointed in her face. But fear alone would not sate Bellatrix this time — she wished to show Harry the full extent of his failure.

The madwoman made a tugging motion with her wand and Ginny's body began to push with all of its might against its bonds, Bellatrix's spell beckoning Ginny's body forth, without said body's consent or aid. Ginny, whose initial reaction to being pulled from her bonds (with the bonds still attached) had been discomfort, was soon in great pain as a struggle for dominance began between the wall and her limbs.

Harry could do little more than watch in fear and loathing as Ginny's body was slowly torn from the wall. He did not believe that Bellatrix even had a point to make at this time; she was merely enjoying this small form of torture. But when Bellatrix stopped tugging and instead flicked her wand at all four of Ginny's chains in quick succession, Harry quickly understood her aim.

Ginny kicked and struggled against the invisible force that held her suspended in the air; her bonds had been undone — this was her chance, if she could only get away! But she could not get away, and everyone in the room knew it. Still, if she had stopped to wonder what the hell the purpose of this escapade was, she would have realised that there was never a chance for her to escape Bellatrix's clutches. As her mind was not clear enough to think this, she continued to kick and struggle. When Ginny's body had been floated directly before Harry, both of them realised why Bellatrix had bothered with this game.

Harry gave a suppressed gasp of horror when he saw Ginny's eye. From her previous position, Harry could not see the damage that Bellatrix had done; but he saw it now. "No..."

Bellatrix let out a triumphant cackle. "Yes, Harry! _Yes_! This is what your stubbornness has brought you — this is the product of your pride! Death and destruction, Harry! This is what your cause has granted you — this is what happens to those who oppose me, Potter!"

"What do you even —?"

Harry was interrupted by one of the most dreadful sounds he could think of: the creaking of the iron door. He knew better now than to hope for salvation. All three occupants of the room shot their attention to the figure standing in the scarlet light of the doorway. His features were at first indistinguishable, allowing only the outline of a person to be seen. But when the person's features came into view, Harry and Ginny at first felt a twang of hope.

In a simultaneous instant, however, both realised that this figure was not their saviour; he was a traitor. It was because of him that they were in this room, and they both understood it now.

"Sirius..." Harry said, his head shaking and his eyes not wanting to believe.

Sirius Black, best friend of James Potter and Remus Lupin, Godfather of Harry Potter, but apparently most importantly of all: cousin of Bellatrix Lestrange. He had betrayed them.

There was no rage in Harry's heart, only despair. He ought to have known; he had been foolish to overlook the possibility that Sirius really was a traitor all along. He had been blind, Dumbledore had been blind. They all had been played for what they were: fools; fools for trusting someone who had only the most superficial reason to be truthful. It had been an elaborate plot and it had worked on all of them.

"I should have known; all along, I should have known," Harry said, shaking his head, his body pervaded with emptiness.

"Come now, Harry, the both of us knew how the ending would be," Sirius said, barking a laugh. Across his face was an invigorated smile, the smile that Harry saw in pictures of Sirius from before he was sent to Azkaban.

"When did you turn, Sirius, and why?"

Sirius smiled further still, nostalgia clouding his eyes. "I remember the very moment — the moment I lost my inhibitions and realised that everything I'd been told was true, the moment that it all became very clear to me: The day I went after Peter."

He remembered it vividly; he had spoken with Hagrid outside of Godric's Hollow, and he knew exactly what Peter had done. Sirius' plan had failed — the ultimate diversion had failed. And so he hunted him. He remembered his very thoughts...

Sirius would have his blood. Peter was the traitor whom they had sought for so long now. It was he who had been providing information for the other side. For more than a year now, he and his fellows had sensed that a spy was amongst them. And now he, Sirius Black, knew exactly who it was. He was once amongst Sirius' greatest friends; he was a man whom Sirius had once favourably contrasted with his brother of blood; and Peter Pettigrew had betrayed them all.

Sirius roamed the streets of London, searching ragingly for the rat. His motions were stiff and rigid and his fury was so complete that he paid no mind to the fact that he was prowling one of the largest Muggle dwellings in England, clutching a wand in plain sight.

It was nearly nightfall when the marauder founds his prey. When his kill spotted him, the rat immediately tried to scamper away. Peter pushed his way through the crowd of Muggles; frantically trying to escape what he knew must be his inevitable fate.

With a snarl, Sirius took off after his one-time friend. Although he started on the opposite side of the street, Sirius quickly caught up with Peter. He reared back his wand and with greatest haste tried to cast the Killing curse on Peter, not wasting any time with magical pleasantries: spells that wouldn't kill upon contact.

Sirius' aim was erratic, and his curse went wide of Peter. By now the Muggles on the street were watching the spectacle in confusion. Peter stopped trying to run and now, with his back against a shop window, he faced his hunter.

"Lily and James, Sirius, how could you?" he shouted wildly, deliberately. "They were our friends! And you — you sold them out! You sold us all out!"

He ignored the rat's jibes. Sirius, not wasting time on verbalising an incantation, fired another lethal curse at Peter Pettigrew. Peter tried to side-step the spiky-yellow curse, but instead fell sideways. He quickly scrambled to his feet, his right hand fiddling behind his back. There was terror in his eyes, but there was also something that unnerved Sirius. In the eyes of Peter Pettigrew, there was cunning understanding and the capacity for the formulation of something dastardly. The worthless fuck had finally found cunning.

"_REDUCTO_!" shouted Peter, his hand still behind his back. Sirius watched numbly as the street was blown apart; he heard the screams of the Muggles and the wail of a young girl. He had just raised his wand again to curse Peter when he realised that he couldn't see him. And then, through the smoke and debris cast off by the curse, he saw a fat rat scurry as quickly as it could into the street, and down into the sewers.

Peter had escaped.

A moment later, Sirius felt a sharp pain the back of his head, and he fell to the ground and his vision went black.

It seemed like an instant later, though it might have been a lifetime, that he was awoken. He immediately registered that he was bound and that his body was completely immobile. He could make out the face of Cornelius Fudge.

The man's face was contorted in both worry and fear. He was sweating profusely and his eyes were wild. He brought his face just in front of Sirius'.

"I can't help you!" he whispered feverishly, his face a fierce magenta. "There is nothing I can do!"

Then, something in Sirius's head snapped. Suddenly, he felt the compulsion to laugh. There was no humour in this street, which now smelt so starkly of blood. He laughed wildly, feeling like a man who feigned laughter at a dull joke told at a still duller party. He felt obligated to laugh, to pay his dues.

The popping of Apparation increased his laughter. Even to him, the sound was dead. And as his laughter grew higher in pitch and volume, he felt sanity begin to ebb away.

And then the light began to ebb away.

And then everything was gone forever...

"You would align yourself with Severus?" Harry spat, disgusted, when Sirius had finished his tale. "You would align yourself with Peter?"

"Snape is a fool!" Sirius exclaimed, the smile gone from his face. "He had a decade to kill you — and you!" Sirius said, shooting a glare at Ginny, who had thus far remained silent, wearing a lifeless face. "But he did neither."

Bellatrix played apologist, "He led the Master's forces for ten years, Sirius. His spy system is more extensive than the Dark Lord's at the height of his power."

"But he did not act, Bella! I rotted in Azkaban and you fought for survival while Snape sat idly by when he should have been continuing our work!"

"He did more! It was because of his information, Sirius, that we were even able to save you from that island!"

"We?" Harry asked, interrupting the cousinly banter. Of course there was something more to Sirius' escape than his own account told. It would not have been improper for him to instead remark that he hadn't even known someone else had saved Sirius, but it would have been a worthless question. This one took care of the other anyway.

Sirius looked at Harry, inclined his head forward slightly and smiled terribly. "Remus," he whispered, his teeth bared.

Harry received the blow passively, refusing to allow any emotion to cross his face. Quietly, he said, "The Professor will know by now."

Bellatrix and Sirius both smiled at that; humourless, distorted smirks. It was fitting of the mood. "Dumbledore is as ignorant now as ever he was," Sirius responded. "He accepted me into the fold readily and eagerly, with mere cursory checks of my tale!" Sirius laughed. "He has no idea, Harry, of my loyalties."

"You're wrong, Sirius;" Harry said, speaking down to the man, despite coming up short by several inches "nothing evades the Professor's notice for long."

Sirius smirked at Harry, but said nothing to him. He instead asked Bellatrix, "What is she doing unbound?" meaning Ginny. His tone was detached, neutral and not really interested. He may well have been asking if it was to rain that day. Bellatrix turned Ginny to Sirius, whose back had been to him, by way of answering Sirius. The man smiled. "Delightful."

He stared at Ginny's slashed face and her ruined eye, Ginny glaring at him straight in the face all along. Perhaps subconsciously, a frown formed on his face. Something in her ruined visage displeased him. His frown morphed to a scowl. "_Occulare_," he said dispassionately, having twirled his wand in her face.

There was a small puff of smoke, unremarkable and plain, and from it a black eye-patch materialised. The black patch whipped across Ginny's face, causing a hiss of surprise and fleeting stinging to emit from her mouth, and fastened itself from behind.

Obscuring Ginny's eye was purely cosmetic, however, and even then it was only just adequate. It covered her spoiled eye, but her slashed forehead and upper cheek were both exposed still. This eye-patch did not provide any kind of healing to her eye; it seemed as if Sirius' motives for covering her eye were for his own benefit, not hers. This, traitor that he was, was all that could be expected of him.

Bellatrix looked at him with disapproval. "You seem to be missing the purpose of this, my darling cousin."

For some reason that was not immediately obvious, her words angered Sirius. And, without any kind of warning, he slashed his wand, still in his hand from the earlier conjuration, at Ginny's chest. A gasp resounded from Ginny as the red-headed girl was thrust backward, soaring through the air. A louder gasp was drowned out by the hollow thud of her back, legs, arms, and head smashing into the wall. The lattermost caused her eye to flutter and shut, consciousness having been revoked.

Sirius kept the small red-head stuck to the wall. "I know our _purpose_, Bellatrix," he snarled. He stormed over to where Ginny was pinned and performed some kind of nonverbal spell. His wand-tip began to glow and Sirius lifted Ginny's eye patch. He cauterised her wound, speaking to Bellatrix as Ginny's eye sizzled. "I know it quite as well as you; having tapped me, the first action you took was to inform me!"

Bellatrix simply smiled, approving of his actions. She said something, but Harry, who was no longer considering their by-play, did not pick it up. He was too busy weakening, too occupied with reverting to his former state. His wits were dulling, his senses failing. He did not know if Bellatrix and Sirius were aware of it, but there was no longer a single iota of magic in his veins. Magiclessness caused quite an unusual effect on a wizard; it was a sense of profound tiredness, but therein also laid deeper sense weakness; a deep, life-threatening weakness. A wizard is born with magic; the span of his life involves magic on the deepest levels. For one as Harry, whose magical prowess was more tied to his life than perhaps any other of his age, it was a near deathblow.

Harry's mouth opened slightly, his jaw having slackened, as his head began to swirl. His eyes lost their focus and they began to open and close at odd intervals, sometimes going half way closed before opening again sharply. It was when his left eye began to twitch and both eyes began to roll backwards that consciousness was lost and his body slackened.

Sirius and Bellatrix, to their credit, did notice almost immediately that Harry's health was failing. Their expressions were mostly blank, however; largely apathetic, with a hint of some unidentified emotion muting through. It took Sirius and Bellatrix a moment to look at each other again, their gazes having been fixed upon the bodies of Harry and Ginny respectively.

Sirius flicked his wand at Ginny's pinned body, causing her arms and legs to be affixed by chains yet again. Then he spoke to Bellatrix in a casual tone, "I'd almost forgotten why it was I'd come." He smiled lightly. "They've arrived." Sirius smiled. "Shall I bring them down?"

Bellatrix grinned a feral grin. She squirmed slightly and trills danced up her spine, and a flighty sensation rested in the pit of her stomach.

"Yes."


	6. Chapter 6: A Strange Day

**PORNOGRAPHY**

**A STRANGE DAY**

Foggy. It was a funny sort of adjective to attach to a state of mind, if one granted to it proper thought. The fog was purely metaphorical, but the description was somehow apt. Really, a fogged mind was a particularly mild way of describing what some succumbed to. 'Fog' suggested that the happenings of the mind were bound to clear, as all fogs must. It would be like describing the deep green sea as a puddle. Successful in imagery, but, given proper thought, it proved itself to be insufficient and was hindered by inaccuracy. It was therefore unfortunate that Harry Potter, who was quite fond of these things, could not attach such a serene little adjective to the wild torrent of uncertainty that plagued him.

If he had to, he would have likened it to the sweeping feeling just before sleep; if one were to be awoken just before sleep hit, a sense of profound disorientation would overtake them. This was similar to that forced-awake feeling, except he could not testify to being properly awake. He was sentient, in his way, but he also reckoned that he was unconscious. So cold were the colours, it must all be a dream.

He could see shapes and hear sounds, distorted and unusual as they were. Nothing quite made sense and he had an odd suspended feeling about him. His mind was out of sorts. He was aware enough to realise that what he was experiencing — the shapes and the colours and the sounds — weren't quite real enough to be true, but at the same time was unable to really understand what it was that he was experiencing.

The sensation of floating in this distorted inner-worldview was, unfortunately for Harry, not at all a pleasant thing. There was in him a sense of urgency and fright; this detracted infinitely from the otherwise enjoyable experience of floating. The trouble was that the shapes were not soft, kindly distorted geometrics. The colours were not shiny, happy yellows and inviting blues. The sounds were not quiet hums and lightly tinkling bells.

No, it was all wrong. The shapes were harsh and jagged, ugly and stark. The colours were flashing and bright, searing on the eyes and unforgiving on the mind. They flashed quickly, in and out, like an assault upon the wonderful light-colours or plaintive darkness that Harry so wished would cloud his mind. Terrible figures filled his head; blinded old men in ragged clothes, their eyes and teeth having but one thing in common: a gaping emptiness; bloody handkerchiefs, closed over a young girl's mouth; the tears of another as a skull was brutally done away with. If it were not for the sounds, the terrible, wrenching sounds, then perhaps he could have blocked it all out, kept it all away. But the sounds were relentless — the screams and the quick strikes of high-pitched crashing; the laughs, high-pitched and cold; a thousand other voices screaming in rage and pain, building higher and higher and higher —

And it was quiet again. The images faded away; there were no longer shapes and colours, deformed bodies and terrible sights. Things were peaceful, but something in Harry, the same part of him that had just seconds before been paralysed by an overwhelming sense of terror, was filled with a weighty dread that placed him on edge. It was like iron in the pit of his stomach and it chilled him from his head to his toes.

There was haze where before there was nothing. It swirled round and round and round, contorting and morphing. In Harry's own mind, he saw himself in a third-person perspective, gazing at this swirling haze. It was coloured with dark purples and blacks and malicious blues; there was something definitively foreboding about the colours and something about the very way the torrent swirled suggested sinister things.

The world around this third-person representation of himself transformed; previously black and of nothingness, there now were storm clouds. Black colours and dark greys now made up the atmosphere, and ever on the torrent spun. The sounds started up again; he could hear heavy rain falling on the ground. He heard glass break and then there was a softly pounding rumble of thunder, happening much too rapidly to be natural. There was more than one crashing beat in a second, but Harry could see no lightning.

Then the swirling mass before him grew bright, discarding the darker shades of before and replacing it all with bright, vivid white. It grew stronger and more intense and, if this had occurred in whatever Harry could possible term as reality, he would have had to look away from the source. But he was not in what could be termed reality, so he did not turn away and the shapes, standing out from the white, swirling mass before him, continued to distort themselves and transform.

They slowly gained shape as Harry's hell continued onward; the torrent expanded and overtook him. The booming of the thunder grew louder and the hiss of rain on ground did too, the chaos of sound and sight was mounting higher and higher as the swirling haze continued to twist upon itself, morphing into slightly less vague shapes with every passing moment.

As everything — the volume and the brightness of the light and the clearing of the images produced by the torrent — continued to advance further and further, Harry's own mind began to jumble. His thoughts were no longer hindered by any kind of fog, but now they were illogical and following one another in a continuous mass of discomforting non sequiturs.

Upon his body he began to feel pressures tightening, the reins of whatever it was increasing and gripping him. His body, represented still in this third-person point-of-view, began to feel clammy and slimy as the tightening grew greater. There was nothing he could do, he realised with fright. Voices began sounding amongst the increasing volume of the rain and thunder, between them all creating a torrent of sound to rival the swirling images before him.

And, without his wanting, the swirling torrent of images had stopped swirling, and became clear to his eyes. There was a scene before him: a boy and a girl huddled in the corner of a yellow-tinted, collapsing room. The boy's movements and the girl's movements were frantic and desperate, perhaps predicting their own impending doom. They were saying quiet things to each other, but Harry could not make them out over the howling wind that now accompanied the rainfall, the voices, and the constant thunderclaps.

And suddenly the boy pushed the girl away and the soft yellow glow grew violent and starkly red as Harry jumped to feet; his face looked raging and he was screaming something desperately, incoherently. And Harry could hear it. Because he was him. And she was Ginny.

The veritable monster that was now Harry Potter lay against open air, his arm and legs chained to the wall behind him, but with plenty of slack. His left arm, more stump than anything, bled freely and profusely. It had not been dressed or tended to in any way. His bare chest bled properly, a deserved inconvenience, a welcome mar; his body had been beaten purple.

Harry's breathing was ragged, his face was in a deep scowl, and his teeth bared. His eyes were rolled back in his head slightly, obscuring a small portion of the irises. About him was the palpable air of madness.

"NOTHING!" he shrieked at the only other occupant of the room.

His own self-hate and self-disgust was fuel enough to allow him to lash out against everyone and everything around him as he writhed in his restraints like an animal in pain.

The little girl in the corner whimpered and sobbed, shaking at the sight of the boy she loved. Quietly she spoke, "You love me; I know you do... You love me because I love you..."

Said he, "NO! I fucking _don't_ love you! I don't fucking love you! You mean nothing to me! AND I'LL _NEVER_ FUCKING LOVE YOU!" He began to be overcome by fits of hysteria and everything — his anger, his pain — was rising. "YOU MEAN NOTHING! LEAVE ME ALONE!" A dreadful sense of desperate doom overtook him and he grew more frantic still. "WHY CAN'T YOU JUST LEAVE ME?" And as his voice transcended the space between shriek and hell, he burst.

Pure, raw, hateful red light hurtled at every corner of the space, eviscerating the contents of the room. The little girl in the corner scrambled toward Harry like an animal, primal need overruling any sense of logical thought. But both her actions and she herself were for nothing; like all actions undertaken in that room, it was in pitiless vain and hopelessness. She disappeared too, everything was gone and everything was cold as life again as the light reverted to yellow and continued to a fraught blue.

Harry convulsed and shook with raw emotions, with hatred and disgust. It meant nothing — she meant nothing. Who was _she_ to say she _loved_ him? Who the _fuck_ was _she_ to be so arrogant? So_selfish_?

Didn't she understand? Didn't she understand that everything he was and everything he touched would die? That they would _all_ die?

And then, in that instant, it clicked in his mind. It didn't matter if they all died. It was a welcome force to begin with, death. It was freedom from the chains of humanity and the burdens of thought, freedom from conscience and morality, and pain and suffering, and all that made the world cold. Death was an ideal.

"You mean nothing!" he sputtering into the dark. "You mean nothing..."

The other Harry — the one viewing and simultaneously taking part in these events — was beyond the pale of shaken. Looking at his future, and screaming into the fire. It meant nothing. They would all die.

And though he felt consciousness gripping him, threatening to force him into re-emerging from this place, he resisted. Repeating the phrase over and over like a mantra, Harry clung to the words:

"It doesn't matter if we all die...

"It doesn't matter if we all die...

"It doesn't matter if we all die..."


	7. Chapter 7: Cold

**PORNOGRAPHY**

**COLD**

It was unfortunate for Harry that lucidity and wakefulness were not exactly preferable to his violent limbo-state. When reality regained control of him, he had the misfortune of feeling the full after-effects of whatever nightmare it was he had just escaped from. His first awareness of reality was that he was shaking. Powerfully.

It was a potent thing, that which he had just endured, and his body was both physically drained and on the emotional edge. Madness had never been this inviting, never felt so warm and tempting.

Had he seen what was to be? Was _this_ their inevitable fate? The sights he had seen and the sounds he had heard in his dreamscape haunted him and tormented him to his very core. A heavy, leaden ache filled his centre. He didn't know what the emotion was; it was certainly nothing he had ever felt. Dread was too light a word to describe what encompassed him; terror too mild. It was some kind of fusion of the worst things he could envision; not a pain in the common sense, but something exponentially more haunting.

He felt nauseous, he realised after a moment. He could feel the sick in his stomach, feel the swimming and swirling of his head. It wasn't truth — it couldn't be. He could never be the one to bring about Ginny's destruction. He loved her and he knew it. And it was then that reality became crueller. A phantom of his nightmares, a spectre of his doom, had lingered on: Doubt.

If he could have been chilled further, this voice of dissension would have done it. In its way, Doubt solidified further Harry's nightmare's place in reality. It validated and authenticated all that he had seen. He had no defence against his own mind; against the self, Occlumency was as useless as a garden hose in hell. This internal foe could not be blotted out by any defence he possessed.

How could he even know what love was? What had he ever had to weight it against? He'd had Ginny forever; and Dumbledore too. He knew no state other than that which he was in, and to term it love seemed obvious. But he had no way of knowing; he had no memory of a condition other than that which he had always been in.

Did he hate Bellatrix? Yes. With every fibre of his being, he despised that monster of a woman. That feeling, surely, was the opposite of his love. But it didn't matter. Love and hate, life and death — it was all inconsequential in this place. The mixed dread and terror, its intensity having previously been in stasis, consumed him. He could feel the sickness in the pit of his stomach rising.

Lustfully, he retched. His eyes were clammed shut, refusing to see anything at all. He continued to retch, the pit of his disgust not being sated by the first act. Disgust and hate and fear and sadness were all that filled him, and he now retched it out in choked bouts of vomiting. It was relentless and made him feel weaker still. He kept retching and he surely had by now begun to vomit blood; there was no food in his stomach to eject. Hate and disgust were too ethereal in nature to be expelled in such a way.

His head began to swirl and he surely would have lost consciousness had it not been for a horrible screeching sound. He felt his stomach block itself off and sink further as the cold overtook him. He knew that sensation. He knew that sound.

Dementors.

He flung his eyelids open so quickly that he was surprised they remained attached. He looked around the cold room wildly, seeing his breath before him in little puffs. The glaring red light, product of Bellatrix's torches, did not illuminate the Dementors. He shook against his chains as he threw his head at odd angles, trying to spot the beasts. But he couldn't see them.

He could hear them...

He could feel them...

He could not see them.

It struck him. He couldn't see them because there was no magic in him. He was effectively a Muggle. He would not even get to see his doom, he realised dismally. He saw that Ginny was unconscious beside him and he hoped that she stayed that way. He desperately wished that Dementors could not suck the soul out of a being who could not open its jaw willingly. But hopes like these were lost wishes.

Any thoughts he'd had about Bellatrix being reluctant to kill them had been quelled by this time. The damage she had inflicted on them could have done the deaths of them both. To add to that, Bellatrix's questioning of them was cursory at best. Her aim did not at all seem to be to gain information or interrogate. It seemed to be purely born of hate. Perhaps amusement. Perhaps boredom.

Harry was quite confident that Bellatrix would allow the Dementor(s?) to extract his and Ginny's souls. And it was for this reason that he greatly feared what was to come. It made the whole matter worse by a mind-boggling degree that he would not even get to view his doom. He would be a sitting — not to mention chained — duck, with no means to defend himself or ward off his assailant.

Shaking, his jaw clenched but his teeth slightly bared, he contemplated living without a soul. His arms were convulsing, not in the wild, tortured manner of the Cruciatus, but with chill and fear.

He had never been good with Dementors. Less than a year ago, Dementors had been stationed at Hogwarts, though he had done little more than pass them a few times a week. He had managed to escape those encounters with little more than ice in his veins, but he had not been so fortunate the last time he and Ginny had accompanied Dumbledore to the Ministry.

Dumbledore had resigned from the Wizengamot more than a decade ago, but he was still called back to the Ministry to aid them on particularly difficult matters when the need arose. It had two years back. An alleged ex-Death Eater had been on trial for the death of a family of half-bloods in Kent, and the Ministry had called Dumbledore to the Ministry for advice.

As always happened, Harry and Ginny accompanied the man. When the verdict had been decided upon, Dementors came for the man. Harry became a mess when they came. Screams had filled his head; the world had become cold and black. Ginny later told him that one of the Dementors had glided toward him just after he'd lost consciousness, but had been repelled by the Professor. Harry never bothered asking what became of the murderer.

If there was one benefit of the Dementors' presence currently, and there likely was only the one, then it was that the sense of dread and terror that had encompassed him when he had seen himself obliterate Ginny had passed. Granted, it had been replaced with a different kind of chill and dread, and it could not be determined which was preferable. But still, it was different, and that counted for something.

Harry could feel the Dementors coming closer. He knew they must be near. He knew that more than one was in the room; the sensations were too potent for a single Dementor. Harry could feel his eyeballs fluttering slightly, as his eyelids remained shut. He clamped his mouth firmly shut, locking his jaw and mashing together his lips. He would not go easily.

He searched inside of himself for one last bit of calmness. That the adverb 'desperately' could be attached to his search showed just how not calm he was. How was he supposed to just stand there and let his soul be taken? He certainly didn't know.

And then he felt it: The first definite signs of the proximity of the Dementors. Terrible images began to return to his mind, and the voices started.

His mother pleading with Lord Voldemort to leave Harry alone, begging him to kill her in his stead. Voldemort scornfully ordering Harry's mother to move aside. His mother's refusal. Voldemort's high, cold voice uttering those fateful words. The high gale of laughter that followed, Voldemort's victory pronouncement. The serpentine figure turning his wand on baby Harry. The bright green flash...

His experiences two years ago flashed into his mind, overtaking the images of his family's doom. The cold, stiff bodies of the basilisk's victims. Hermione's limp form in the Chamber of Secrets, near death. Duelling the ghost of Tom Riddle in the Chamber, both he and Ginny losing ground with every minute. The terror of catching glimpses of Dumbledore battling Riddle's basilisk. The grotesque figure of Gilderoy Lockhart, crucified over Dumbledore's chair at the head table. His face, twisted into a hideous smile...

Waking up and discovering himself here, in this dungeon. The bouts of the Cruciatus that he had endured. The Sectumsempra spell that Bellatrix had struck him with. The feeling of his flesh tearing away. The sounds of slaughter in the void, hearing the rising scream and seeing himself vaporise Ginny. The realisation that Bellatrix was going to kill them, without their ability to stop it. He was filled with a profound sense of the futility of life and the blissful logicality of death...

His head swam faster and faster, each second making the confusion and disorientation in his head grow more powerful, more complete. And then he slunk back in his chains. An impression of sound. And then everything was gone again.

Ginny could feel herself panting, twisting in her mind, fighting her devils in futility. She was trapped in her head, a nightmare raging. She cringed at the sight before her and fought with all her might to save him. There was no comprehension, to Ginny's great misfortune, that what she was viewing had passed and was not now reality. The sensation of watching Harry as he was tortured as Bellatrix sneered, and knowing that she, Ginny, could do nothing to help him, was amongst the most helpless feelings she could endure.

It was a horrible thing, to watch a loved one be destroyed; it was a thing all the more horrible to know that you could stop it, but mustn't. And that was Ginny's position. She knew that there was something she could do to save Harry; she knew that Bellatrix wanted something that she, Ginny, could nearly certainly give. But to give Bellatrix what she wanted to would be to forfeit all of their lives. Hers, Harry's, and Hermione's.

If there was a sense of admiration in her from Harry's horrible display, she could not locate it. Why ought she to care if what he did for them by bearing this cross was far and away the most selfless act she'd ever seen or heard of? It was gluttonous, masochistic. Whatever selflessness or bravery present therein was drowned out by the foolishness of his actions and the terror they induced in her and their compatriot.

But still, there was _something_ about the sight of him, writhing in his chains, wishing nothing but to scream in agony, yet still finding it within himself to mock Bellatrix... To mock her would have been impressive enough, the circumstances considered, but to go a step further and do so in a foreign tongue was to exceed the boundaries of audacity. It was a more profound mockery, that which came from an adversary who, even under greatest physical woe, still managed to be cryptic in his attacks.

The scene in Ginny's head changed. She was no longer watching Harry writhe in pain. Helplessly, she had watched as Bellatrix curved her body toward Hermione and shot off her deathblow. She could not see if the spell had hit its mark, but Bellatrix's jubilant and triumphant cackling had told her all she needed to know. Hermione was irrevocably, irretrievably dead.

Ginny had only ever had three friends in her life. There was Harry, with whom she had something that transcended friendship; there was Dumbledore, who, whilst a friendly-ear to her, was much more of a surrogate father — or perhaps grandfather — than a friend; and then there was Hermione. Hermione was the only normal friend that Ginny had ever had; after all, it was difficult for one like Ginny Weasley to have any normal friends, security and paranoia both being too overwhelming for most.

Security, in this case, was provided by Dumbledore, who always made sure, in some way, that both she and Harry were protected. Of course, at the crucial moment, his safeguards and securities had failed. The paranoia was on the part of any potential friends Harry or Ginny could have made; there were few who lacked both jealousy of their position and fear of their abilities. In the case of both Harry and Ginny, their reputations both preceded and mired them.

In Hermione, Ginny had found a fleeting sense of a normal friendship; although Ginny, as well as Harry, was somewhat socially hindered and awkward because of her lack of experience with peers, Hermione had been patient and a friend to Ginny and Harry both. But that was gone now. All that was left was the memory of a fallen friend, and their failure to protect her.

Jarringly, Ginny was awoken. Though by what, she could not know. What she _did_ now almost immediately upon waking, however, was that the room was exceptionally cold. Delicately, she opened her left eye. She could tell from the odd feeling on her face and the heaviness on her right eyelid that her ruined eye had scabbed over itself.

A trill ran up her spine as dread pitted itself in her stomach. A sense of hopelessness and overwhelming darkness overtook her, and the cold gripped her all the more. She looked around with her one good eye, inspecting the room for some sign of Bellatrix or Sirius, but did not find them. Instead, she found something worse.

Dementors.

Three of them.

The three dark beasts stood in a semicircle around Harry, and it was only due to luck, if one could call it that, that Ginny was even able to notice the third, which was situated almost directly opposite one of its counterparts. From the glimpse that Ginny had caught of Harry, instigated by the same stroke of black fortune that had informed her of the third Dementor's presence, she could tell, and rightfully hoped, that he was unconscious, though she worried for his mental state. She had never given thought to the subliminal occurrences that might be prompted by Dementor action.

It was then that she realised that her nightmares were likely not of the usual ilk. They likely were Dementor-induced, which only raised the level of her alarm for Harry's sake. Whatever terrible visions that she had endured, she knew that Harry had it worse. After all, it was preferable, if only marginally, to witness torture than to be the recipient.

Ginny felt that terrible sense of hopelessness and helplessness again. She had no wand, no Patronus to produce, no defence to offer, no help to give. And then she did a very silly thing; a very worthless, ineffective thing. She screamed at the Dementors.

_Screamed_.

There were no clearly defined words in her scream. There were no jeers or insults and no demands to speak of. All that spewed forth from her mouth was a long, banshee-inspired scream. It was high-pitched, but hardly to be considered a squeal, and loud, like a megaphone giving feedback. There really was a world's worth of difference between a squeal and a squeak. To characterise Ginny's outburst with either word would be inappropriate, as both had a rather diminutive connotation to them. But there was nothing diminutive or small about Ginny's actions.

If she had been able to think objectively — and she couldn't —, she might have realised that screaming at Dementors with a scarred throat was inadvisable. This was particularly true when said Dementors were completely unaffected by the girl's continuous outburst. Pervading of all things as her scream was, the Dementors didn't seem to notice. How they managed that feat was an unknown thing; as was often the case, the question _how_ was unable to be answered.

Ginny had spirit about her, however, and there was no will within her to cease her screams. It was a form of primal therapy, really; she screamed out her frustrations, her angers, her sorrows, her fears, her helplessness, her hopelessness, and regret...

Perhaps it was because the screams _were_ so helpless and despairing that the Dementors, simultaneously, did a _markedly_ unusual thing. They stopped what they were doing — which, really, was about as close to nothing as they could manage without sitting down — and turned toward the chained redhead.

Dementors are despicable creatures in that their appetites cannot be whetted by anything but fear and sorrow. Rage and happiness do not attract them, neither being foul enough emotions for the cloaked figures to tolerate. The only feasible explanation — and it was one which required quite a lot of belief in the girl's capacity for despair — was that Ginny's emotionally distraught state was more potent than Harry's own.

Ginny did not stop screaming when the Dementors turned toward her. In fact, she did not even notice. Here eyes were clamped shut and, after nearly a full minute of screaming at the creatures, her breath began to fail and her volume began to wind down. It was only when she was unable to utter another sound that she opened her eye and looked upon her foes, advancing toward her slowly and curiously.

The sight of a curious Dementor was new to her. If she was mentally able to do so, she might have returned their curiosity. But she could not. Psychologically, she was through, spent. Her mind was scrambled with despair and ill thoughts; the most prominent of these a yearning. A yearning, a hopeless wish, to have died so many years before; before cognisance had taken hold, before she had learned of the evils of the world, before she had been forced to witness the torture of the one she loved, before she had been forced to herself endure the terrors of personal war... before she had been aware of anything at all. She yearned to have been euthanised; her helpless mind convinced, with every last fibre she clung to, that it would have been better to have died very young and innocent, before the world could dilute her, before the world could taint her.

The Dementors moved closer, intoxicated by the despair of her. The Dementors were in a delta kind of formation, with the middle Dementor closest to Ginny. They glided forward, the middle one reaching its hand out; its scaly hand groping delicately at its object of lust. The Dementors moved closer still, within a foot of Ginny; the centre one had reached both arms up to its hood, holding its hands on the hood edges, not yet retracting the cloth.

The young, teenage Ginny Weasley looked up at the Dementors, her eyes wide and begging for the release that they alone could offer.

The centre Dementor lowered his hood, revealing its distorted and scabbed head. Slowly, it reached out and grabbed Ginny by the sides of the face. With pained slowness and fatalistic grace, the Dementor pulled Ginny's face toward its own. It moved very, very slowly, drawing out the moment and revelling in the soul it was to steal.

"Please..."

The Dementor brought its vacuous mouth to Ginny's lips and sucked in a deep breath.

The colour receded from Ginny's face; the light in her eyes faltered and disappeared; her lips were made ashen, contrasted against the Dementor's own black lips; her red hair seemed to lose whatever vivacity it had retained.

Ginny wilted.

And she died.

And she was clean again.

_**A/N: If you wish to read more of my work, I suggest 'Rebellion,' which has also been updated today.**_


	8. Chapter 8: Pornography

**PORNOGRAPHY**

**CHAPTER EIGHT**

**PORNOGRAPHY**

"The Ministry of Magic has never conducted a successful study of the effects of the Dementor's Kiss. Did you know that, Harry?" Her words were poison, uttered only to incite pain and suffering on him. She was delighted by Ginny's having been kissed; the effects it would have on Harry fascinated her in ways nothing else was able to.

"I know the fate of those whom the Dementors have kissed. It is nothing like the fate the Ministry believes it to be. Insentience, incognisance, apathy: none are present in the Dementor's Kiss. Soullessness is much crueller than that. Soullessness is infinite, gruelling, incessant _suffering_."

Her every word pushed Harry further into his despair. Ginny was gone. Hermione was gone. Harry had failed them both. He had lost one directly to Bellatrix and another to her Dementors. And Harry had been unable to save them. He had failed them. There was nothing left for him. Not here, not in Hogwarts, not in England, in Europe, in life. His reason for continuing on — the reason he had resisted Bellatrix for these long weeks — was gone. What would it matter now if he could negotiate his way out? What would he have to return to? What would be Hogwarts without the one for whom the sun shined? The one who brought the last glimmer of brightness to his world? There was nothing.

A choked sob escaped his lips. She was dead. Ginny — _his_ Ginny — was gone as he knew her. And she was suffering still. The Dementor's Kiss was not what it had always been advertised as — it was not a state of ignorance. It was a state of eternal, perpetual torment. And Harry had been the one to deliver her to it.

"She could have lived!" Bellatrix exclaimed. "Were it not for _you_!

"You as well as killed her!

"You could have stopped it all—you could have saved her! You sealed her fate!

"You _killed_ her!"

"No!"

The word escaped his lips in a howl, like an animal in pain. He was shaking and smouldering tears were streaming down his face, his eyes a dark scarlet, standing stark against the purple rings beneath his eyes.

"You killed her, Harry! You killed her!"

"_NO_!"

And he snapped — animal instinct overtook him and he lunged after Bellatrix, his chains holding him back. He fought against them, writhing against his bonds in his fruitless attempt to attack Bellatrix — to beat her to death, to sentence her to the fate she had forced upon Ginny. The sentence that _he_ had forced upon Ginny.

But his chains were unrelenting, and Bellatrix laughed at him and mocked him as he struggled against them. Helplessly, he fought, but was unable to break past his chains. He roared at Bellatrix, a strangled battle cry, as he lunged after her again. Bellatrix was brave in her mockery, inching closer to Harry with every passing moment, physically boasting.

"You killed her, and you can't even avenge her!" Bellatrix screamed at him, a mad kind of euphoria in her eyes, a brand of darkest sadism. "You're a worthless boy, Harry, too talentless to even take vengeance! You weak, worthless little cu—"

But she had been foolish and proud and had inched just close enough for Harry to seize part of her hair with his left hand. Primality gripping him, Harry dragged Bellatrix closer, still snarling, still screaming the animal scream. She herself yelped in shock and surprise and fear and dread. She reached into her folds, vainly groping for her wooden rod, but she could not overcome Harry's fierce strength, his primal rage.

Harry ripped his right arm forward, trying with every sense of urgent might his body possessed to grab Bellatrix, wanting nothing more than to wrap his hands around her throat. No, _needing_ to wrap his hands around her throat. He longed to squeeze the life out of her, to strangle the terrible venom that was she, to strangle it out and exorcise all there was within her. He needed so fiercely to rip into her with his bare hands, to tear her apart as she had torn them all apart.

Blinding, white rage proved a powerful motivator and it managed to empower Harry enough to break his bonds. Although having not eaten more than blood, dust, and dirt for the duration of his captivity, Harry possessed in his muscles enough strength for this last gothic task. The chain that bound his right arm was torn from the wall, and immediately he clapped it over Bellatrix's thin neck, joining his left hand, choking the life out of her.

And as he gripped the life out of his greatest nemesis, his darkest foe, terror filled her eyes. It was a terror that empowered Harry, that emboldened him and pushed him forward. He would take her to the edge of the cliff and break on through to the other side. His knuckles were becoming white as Bellatrix made choking and gasping sounds with her crushed throat, but Harry was not sated. He tore into her, ripping and clawing with all his hate, needing to take her throat from her. Her death alone would not satisfy him — he wanted more, needed more.

He wanted to tear out her throat and feed it to her. He needed to feel her beating heart in his clutching hand. He needed to beat the life out of her, to choke it out, to rip it out, to murder, slaughter, devastate her, to beat her, perform all her evils, sate the terrible nature of his rageful hate — bring her to the end of his dreams. He needed to make her know the hate that she'd bred, the hate that he felt.

Bellatrix's eyes began to turn red as Harry kept throttling her throat and continued to try tearing at it, attempting to rip out the insides of her. He stopped trying to rip open her throat and instead moved his hand upward, curling his thumb and pushing it against her bleeding eye. He wanted to gouge it out, to dance on it, perform barbaric acts upon it; he wanted to keep a relic of her deformed and butchered corpse, when nothing else would be left.

Bellatrix was not even able to scream as her eye was ripped from its socket. Harry crushed it in his hand, still snarling at Bellatrix and crushing her throat, with all his might ending everything she was. Harry lunged his neck forward in a ragged, brutal motion. He caught Bellatrix's nose in his jaws and clamped them down, then tugged. He shook his head, trying to tear the woman's nose from her face, trying to unmake what once was beautiful, to make hideous his tormentor, to make her look as he felt. It was with a whipping back of Harry's head that he realised he had torn off the woman's nose.

Harry spat in disgust, his movements still primal and animal. But it wasn't enough, it was never enough. His one hand still clamped on Bellatrix's throat, Harry started pummelling her face, beating her, crushing her with his blows. He lunged his face forward again, smashing his skull into hers. Harry all the while maintained his hold on his last nemesis. He continued to grip and strangle long after the last breath had escaped her body, after her movements had stopped and her body had begun to grow cold.

"It doesn't matter if we all die, it doesn't matter if we all die, it doesn't matter if we all die," Harry repeated to himself, his own private mantra. He muttered it through tightened lips as he murdered, and screamed it as he thrust his hand into the torso of Bellatrix's robes and groped about, searching for her wand. When he found it a moment later, he let Bellatrix's body fall to the floor. Finally, after a long time of killing, a loud and distinct thump sounded as her body hit the ground.

Harry swung his hand upward, bringing Bellatrix's wand to his temple. "_AVADA KEDAVRA_!" he roared, hatefully, wildly. Despite firmest intent and the depth of his hatred, the curse did not fire.

The man swung his chained foot back and kicked Bellatrix's limp face, knocking it to the side. He screamed at her body, vocally destructing the woman that had destroyed them.

Harry looked to Ginny's body, no longer chained and instead huddled nearby, blank faced. But he knew she was suffering. And so he lunged after her, both of his arm shackles having been torn away, and wished desperately that he could reach her. Hated luck was with him still.

He flopped onto the ground, only his legs still chained, and was able to reach Ginny, but only just. He pulled at the fabric of her clothing, desperately trying to gather her to him. She fell over limply, and Harry was able to drag her nearer.

He managed it and pulled her in close, hugging her desperately, holding her to him. He was on his knees, cradling the fallen girl. Harry pushed back her hair, patting it back and using his filthy, blood-soaked hands to try and tidy her up as best he could. He looked into her eyes and cried. He could see her pain there — it glared up at him so obviously, so terribly.

His face scrunched up so _tightly_ as he wept…. He knew what he had to do. He knew he had to save her. Save her from herself, from her prison. Another sob escaped his throat, wrenching at him and killing him. He consciously tried to build up his rage again, because he knew he couldn't do it otherwise. He knew that there was only one means of death at his disposal; he knew that it was a terrible thing to have to do. He knew he should never have been put in this position.

He looked to Bellatrix, that horrible worthless whore of a woman, and the hate began to rise again. He looked back to Ginny, his eyes so apologetic — so much more pain-filled than any other time in his life. He wept openly and begged absolution of her. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry... I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so _fucking_ sorry!"

Harry brought his hands to her neck and began to squeeze. He shook and shivered and sobbed as he did it, but he did. It was the most horrible thing he'd ever done, the most terrible. He strangled her as her body shook too and her legs flailed wildly. Even without a soul, her body still had its natural responses, and self-preservation kicked in. Harry just strangled harder, because he knew he had to. He knew the pain that she was in. He knew it.

He kept choking until the shaking stopped, until she was silent and still, and her chest no longer rose and fell…. He sobbed so hard, was so overcome by his grief, he then did the only thing he could do, the only logical thing.

Wildly, Harry brought one of his freed hands to his mouth. Tearing his teeth across a wrist, he used ever last drop of violence in him to escape, to embrace death and be free.

With a howl and a wordless scream, Harry's violence overtook him and life pushed out through his open eyes, a final, climactic and vicious haemorrhage letting him in amongst the blissfully dead.


End file.
